Narcissists with Low Self Esteem & Medical Centres with Major PR Issues

I have many things I would like to blog about.  But finding the time to blog is becoming harder and harder.

There's the whole Facebook is for narcissists with low self esteem story splashing across the news headlines.  Is it even possible to be a narcissist and have low self esteem?  Isn't that kind of an oxymoronic concept? And then Mr. Jian Ghomeshi points out on Q this morning that this crazy news story is based on an undergrad thesis.  The study that revealed those results had exactly 100 participants. Not exactly a representative group. This is a national news story?  I have a feeling it's more about the media's obsession with telling us how shallow and silly Facebook and social media in general is. Enough with the picking on social media and the people who use it!  This is one of those instances where it's evolve or die.  While many people use Facebook to annoy the people who follow them - Farmville users, I'm talking to you- it is possible to use Facebook for the greater good.  It's a great networking and promotional tool for instance! 

Then there is another PR story that crossed my desk this morning. A couple of weeks ago a woman in Winnipeg publicly criticized the Lakewood Medical Centre for refusing her elderly mother service because there was an unpaid cancellation fee. Original story here. Now this week, the woman has been banned from returning to the clinic.  According to the Winnipeg Free Press story: "Macduff said her mother got a letter from the clinic's manager saying they will waive her previous "no-show fee" but she must book her own medical appointments and find someone other than her daughter to accompany her to the clinic."  The clinic claims the daughter violated the "policy prohibiting violent or abusive patients and visitors" but refused to comment further.  While we as the general public don't know the full story- like what exactly the daughter did that was abusive or violent - from a PR perspective, this doesn't look good for the Lakewood Medical Centre.  In fact, it looks petty.  The woman's mother missed her appointment because she has severe dementia, a disease where you have good days and bad days.  Her daughter is the only person who can take her mother to appointments, and suddenly the 90 year old mother isn't able to have her primary caregiver there when she visits the doctor. In addition, the daughter is banned access from her own doctor. Without the clinic really explaining their position, the public can only conclude that the reason for the ban is that the woman took a public stance over doctors charging cancellation fees.  That isn't great PR for the Medical Centre.

You add that to the fact that in 2009, a doctor at the same clinic refused to treat a lesbian couple (a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights which says you can't be discriminated against for your sexual orientation) and the Lakewood Medical Centre has a major PR problem.  If they haven't lost patients over these incidents already, they probably will.  Maybe they've weighed the consequences  of that and have decided that it's worth the risk to ban this patient. Maybe they aren't considering the Public Relations fallout at all.  Either way, they don't seem to be doing themselves any favours.