Welcome back everyone for our sixth session, a mini learning session on speaking to the press. Today, we're going to talk again about gotcha moments. We're going to revisit that one more time with some pearls from Dr. Bob Barnott. This is brought to you by SCCM Lead. Again, I'm Jerome Lee, an emergency medicine and critical care physician, MS General in Boston. Thanks, Bob. Do you have a mental framework on how to think about answering questions or even these gotcha moments in the moment if you get stuck with one? Well, first of all, I'm always impassioned when I'm on television. That is, I really strongly believe in whatever I'm talking about. It's not just a back and forth. You have to look at how involved you are. What you have to do is you have to think of yourself at four o'clock in the morning, innovating somebody with COVID and how hard it is to the dedication and what you put into it. The framework has got to be, I'm not this isolated person who's trying to pretend to be a television personality. I'm a doctor, I'm in the ICU, I'm dedicated to these patients, I'm dedicated to the people of Massachusetts, to people around the world. You have to take that really convincing mindset of who you are and what you're doing as you walk in there. Then I always smile as they say, we're going to talk to you, I give a big smile and listen. When they start to say, hey, Jane, it's great to see you again. It was great broadcast we had last time. Don't be afraid that there's this strict set of rules you have to play by there. You want to go back and forth. But in other words, when they come in with this, right at tat tat, it's like, break it up a little bit. Hey, great to see you. That was a great show last night. I really love that. I always say, I want to thank you a lot. You've done a great job for your viewers. Here's another great rule. Don't feel like they own the broadcast. It's your broadcast. You're the expert. You're the one who's bringing you the stuff, do it. So be confident and be confident to kind of break it up a little bit in a friendly way, not interrupting the room, but I mean, very affably, just like you were to go, it's very cool. I'm just going to say such and such. And remember that it's the first 30 seconds. In other words, people are scramming around the dial and I'll say next up is such and such. So, you know, I have one great point. You're kind of going to make off the top. And I know that, you know, you were very concerned about what if someone does ask a question where you don't know the answer? I mean, you know, you never want to prevaricate or pretend you know an answer you don't. But if you were to ask me a question, say, you know, there's this new story out in the Boston school systems have this mandate. What do you think about it? You say, well, you know, honestly, I haven't seen the mandate, but I've seen a lot of the background behind it and a lot of the thinking. And, you know, here's what they did in New York. Here's what they do in Los Angeles. In other words, your job is to bring fresh, exciting approach to this. You know, bring, bring energy, bring enthusiasm. So many times the television crammer is dead in people. It's like, you're like, you know, it's like, oh my God, what's going on here? Oh, you know, so, you know, be friendly, affable, available. You'll probably see the live shot there. So you'll see what it looks like when the back and forth is. And I always, when the producer's in your ear like that, I do ask them, you know, what's the anchor's name? And even how do you sell it? How do you say it? Because sometimes I'm not quite sure, but I really make sure that I know what the anchor's name is because remember, this is a very personal format. I mean, the difference between the movies and TV is that movie stars are exalted, you know, superhuman celebrities of which those of us in medicine are probably not really captivated by. And television is, it's the guy next door or it's the woman next door. So, you know, I would say as you use the medium, remember this is, this should be your medium. More and more now we understand that television and film is the new communication as opposed to books and reading. This is the way we communicate. And I always find it odd that the doctors kind of like stay away from it or, you know, feel that this is sort of for more junior faculty or, you know, sort of don't want to be on television. You should love it. I think, you know, if anything else, you should love the feeling of being on live television because at the end you feel terrific. You're gonna go away and the rest of the day you're gonna be in a really good mood. So, you know, go into it expecting, expecting that you're gonna do well and then do well. And should you, should there be a slight misstep, don't go dripping with sweat and just trying to go for the end line. Never think of, oh, I've got three minutes left here. It's always like, stop just for a moment and say, you know, just start again on that, you know. You always want to be honest with the media and be honest about what's happened here. You know, if your microphone gets pulled off or the screen came or, well, I actually had the live television broadcast, big international broadcast. And my eight-year-old said, dad, you know, my foot hurts. And the actor goes, well, I guess you've got people to attend to. And I go, yeah, I do. So never treat it as an embarrassment. Always acknowledge whatever happens to the happiness. Someone comes through and they ask for you, your beeper goes off, your phone goes off. Don't start dripping with sweat. Take the moment there, go a little levity with it and then go on. And remember that you're performing a tremendous service because there's so much junk now on the blogs and even the makes its way into the mainstream media. And, you know, you have the ultimate expertise in the, you know, through the grand rounding process being up to date on all the literature, treating all those patients. Nobody knows more about this than you do. You have to be convinced of that. Amazing points, Dr. Bob. Many thanks to you for joining us and teaching all of us in the critical care community about talking with the press. So this concludes our six-part initial series on talking to the press, a micro-learning initiative from the SCCM lead group. Thank you again. This is Jerome Lee again, signing off. Thank you.

framework for answering questions

handling 'gotcha moments'

passionate

building rapport

television as means of communication