Welcome to our first SCCM lead micro learning module on speaking with the press. I'm Jerome Lee, a critical care and emergency medicine physician at Mass General in Boston. COVID-19 really highlighted the importance and sort of brought forth to the foreground critical care and the importance of ICUs. And many of us in all the different role groups within the ICUs from nursing to physicians to RTs were for the first time put in front of TV cameras and speaking to the press regularly. Many of us did it for the very first time. So for today's session, I am happy to announce that we have Dr. Bob Arnott, who's going to be joining us who needs no introduction. Briefly, Dr. Arnott is a journalist, author, former medical and foreign correspondent for many major networks, including NBC News, MSNBC, and CBS. He also hosted a TV reality series called Dr. Danger. To this day, he continues to appear on network TV globally. Luckily, we have Dr. Arnott joining us today to talk to us about the do's and don'ts of what to do when talking to the press. First of all, before we start out here, I got to compliment you. You have a great looking background there. You have a very good shot. But since so many of these interviews are being done with Zoom, I thought I'd just share a couple of tips. Number one is always look right there into the lens. Most Zoom interviews are like this. People are looking down here somewhere at the screen, and it's very disconcerting. So, you know, always look directly into the camera. And it makes a big difference how you set it up. That is, this is my screen alone. In fact, I'm going to just turn this off. You have a great background there. The background is pretty important. Here's a virtual background. I actually have a green screen behind me here, so I can put it in. There's a Mass General background as an example. There's a Dartmouth background. You have lots of different backgrounds. And then you have a couple of things you can do here. So first of all, you can't tilt your screen, no, so that you don't have too much headroom, as they say. And you can't add light. So I'm going to add a light. In fact, you can mention this. This is a reporter's little light thing here. And then I have here a professional microphone. That adds a lot of relief there. And then you can also add an extra camera, which I advise if you're doing a lot of these. I'm just going to switch over here for a second. And do you notice the difference? Is that a better looking shot or worse? What do you think? I saw that you moved a little bit to the left. This is just supposed to be a little bit better camera there. So that's the setup. And of course, what else? You want to look relaxed, right? Because if you don't, I think you're guilty. Fire away. That's the hardest part for me, at least. I just have to work on that. We should talk about that. The thing is, you got to be comfortable with being believable. And everybody thinks there's going to be a gotcha moment. And they're sitting there terrified of, like, oh my God, they're going to ask you this question and I won't know the answer. And I'm going to look stupid. So first of all, remember, you have like 18 more years education to pay to, right? You know, everything there is to know about the subject is extremely unlikely in this day and age, especially for local televisions, anyone really has dug into anything. So the likelihood that there really is a gotcha question is it's just extremely unlikely. You know, when I started television at CBS this morning and I was terrified. I was like a kid, right? I was like in my late twenties and I never done television. So there's this big spotlight. You know, I didn't know whether I'd do this or not, but Tim Johnson, who did this at ABC said, look, they never asked doctors to be on TV. You should do this. So I did it. Thank you, Dr. Bob, for joining us today. This is our first lesson and talking to the media today. We spoke a little bit about equipment setup and also gotcha moments. Please return back soon as we have a few more lessons planned.

micro-learning series

speaking with the press

COVID-19 pandemic

press interviews

media interaction