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Reporters, producers, and other members of the news media will no longer have to take "two aspirins and call the doctor in the morning" when deadlines loom and immediate psychiatric information is needed. Emergency assistance is now available through APA’s new Media "Doctor-On-Call" (D-O-C) program.
This service, initiated by APA President Herbert Sacks, M.D., assigns a leading psychiatrist to a member of the media. The psychiatrist’s role as a D-O-C is to serve as a unique psychiatric news and information resource. Journalists who request a personal Media D-O-C are provided immediate contact information for the psychiatrist, including telephone, fax, and beeper numbers and e-mail address.
The psychiatrist assigned exclusively to that journalist usually lives and practices in the journalist’s geographic area and is expert in the issues on which the journalist frequently reports. The journalist and psychiatrist are encouraged to contact each other prior to a deadline emergency and to establish an ongoing journalist/resource relationship.
"This link - this ongoing relationship - eliminates the information-brokering delays too frequently caused when reporters must seek psychiatric experts through hospital, association, and university public relations offices," noted Sacks.
He added that the service recognizes and facilitates what many members of the media already know: "For quick access to deadline-oriented medical information and guidance, find a good, reliable physician who will answer your calls in a timely manner. File his or her contact information in your Rolodex and never lose it!"
More than two dozen journalists and physicians are now participating in the program, with an equal number of physician volunteers waiting to be assigned to journalists.
Both Media D-O-C’s and journalists are finding the relationship a unique and helpful experience. One of the first participating journalists, Miami Herald Tribune health reporter Karen Rafinski, noted, "It is crucial for me to get to know influential members of the psychiatric community who can point me in the right direction." Her assigned physician is Ronald Shellow, M.D., a Miami-based private practitioner and chair of APA’s Joint Commission on Government Relations.
Staff of APA’s Division of Public Affairs (DPA) plans to match an additional 50 journalists with psychiatrists in the next few months and eventually develop a D-O-C medical information corps of hundreds. Staff also is focusing on other aspects of Sacks’s presidential media initiative, including a media and D-O-C’s medical confidentiality consensus conference in February 1998 and an ongoing program of topical "Newsmaker Breakfasts" and radio tours.
"Although we would like to make every APA member a journalist’s D-O-C, we’re starting with the APA leadership and ensuring these D-O-C’s can be expert medical media resources through access to the latest information and breaking news about psychiatric research, treatment, and patient care issues and through maximum contact with the media in topical interview and ‘Meet the Press’ - type opportunities," noted Lynn Schultz-Writsel, the DPA’s deputy director for public affairs operations.