Drew Hudgins (right) shoots video of a simulated Emergency Medical Team response at Trigg County Hospital.
Instead he was holding a video camera, recording the experience from a patient’s viewpoint.
It’s all part of TCH’s plan to update its services with a more functional website. Part of that functionality will include web video.
In a culture that’s increasingly plugged in and video-dependent, research indicates that the average amount of time a person needs to decide whether to explore a website or move on is four seconds. Adding video increases that time to 15 seconds.
That may not sound like much, but in a fast-food, fast-forward society, it could be enough to turn a web visitor into a new customer.
Many hospitals now use web videos as marketing tools to feature patient stories. Hospital staff is inherently part of those stories. The same is true at TCH where medical personnel have taken an active role in telling and re-creating those stories for video.
When Clay Stevens, son of Bill and Faye Stevens of Cadiz, received a head injury while playing basketball with some friends, he was taken to TCH by ambulance before being flown to Nashville.
Twelve-year-old Clay and his parents told their experience on camera for Drew, owner of Hudge Media, LLC, the local multi-media company creating the videos. The family was also asked to re-enact some of the events of that day with the help of Trigg County EMTs, ER staff and an Air Evac LifeTeam crew.
“I didn’t know it would be so hard,” Clay said about the amount of time and effort it takes to put together a six-minute video.
It was hard for his mother to watch, too, as EMTs and the Air Evac crew strapped Clay onto a gurney to re-enact his transfer to the helicopter. The whole process was a little too real for her.
“It was a lot similar to doing it in real life,” Clay said.
His story has a happy ending, one that will be tied into the retelling of another TCH emergency room visit by Buddy Sivills. The former star basketball player and coach is alive thanks to the quick action of TCH staff when he flat-lined following a heart attack.
“We’re really lucky to have the hospital here,” Buddy said during his on-camera interview. “Where would we go without it?”
ऀTwo other stories will be featured on the new site, as well. Pat Rogers needed physical therapy after knee surgery and made a quick recovery with the help of physical therapists at TCH.
The final video is really the first. Marcy Juracka’s story premiered at a fund raiser earlier this year for the hospital’s Breast Imaging Suite. It tells how Marcy’s cancer was detected during a routine exam and diagnosed the same day thanks to the determination of a hospital technician and the cooperation of local doctors.
“That’s the kind of care you want,” said Marcy’s husband, Steve.
ऀHaving lived in New York City and Chicago with access to large hospitals, the Jurackas prefer the personal attention Marcy received at TCH. Steve pointed out that, in their experience, patients often become numbers at large, specialty hospitals.
“It’s not about the size of the hospital,” he said. “It’s about the care you get. It’s about the people.”
That’s how Drew, the guy riding a gurney with a camera, goes about creating videos for clients.
“It’s the people that make the story,” he said. “If you miss that element, you don’t have a story.”
After the weeks of development that go into figuring out how the stories should be told, scheduling is one of the biggest challenges.
“There’s a phenomenal amount of scheduling,” Drew said, “getting multiple lives on the same page to schedule a shoot and, in this case, working with the ER staff and EMTs in the very small amounts of time they have because they have a job to do. They accommodate us whenever they can.”
