Public relations constraints on health physics communications
- ed.
From third Health Physics Society midyear topical symposium; Los Angeles, California, USA (29 Jan 1969). See CONF-690103P3. The literature on Health Physics contains far too littie information about radiation incidents. While many factors contribute to this unfortunate situation, public relations constraints probably dominate. This dearth of detailed radiation incident reports has undesirable consequences for the operational health physicist. He does not learn how a particular situation can develop, how it can be forestalled or handled or even that it is possible, until it happens to him. The impact on management is also serious since few problems are reported, the feeling develops that ratio logical precautions are redundant, overly conservative, and largely unnecessary. It is imperative that the occurrence of radiation incidents be more freely communicated within the area of operational health physics. To this end the following set of rules for placating the public relations concerns was developed: Avoid scare words; never say kill or even injure, though deleterious consequences may be mentioned. Be mathematical; use equations wherever possible. Use jargon and technical terms; kerma is less likely than dose to cause adverse public relation reactions. Be upbeat; tell how things are being (or might be) improved, not how bad they were. Generalize; the reader should not be sure that the condition ever existed at your facility. Know your public relations specialist; each has his own concerns. Keep trying. As a last resort, get someone else to publish the paper. By following these rules operational health physics problems usually can be reported. (auth)
- Research Organization:
- California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena
- NSA Number:
- NSA-29-031587
- OSTI ID:
- 4315236
- Country of Publication:
- Country unknown/Code not available
- Language:
- English
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