Write Medicine: Recent Episodes
Alexandra Howson PhD | CME Writer, Educator, Researcher
Write Medicine is your weekly shot of powerful, practical tips to transform your CME content from meh to marvelous. Join me, Alexandra Howson, PhD, a medical writing veteran with battle scars (and wisdom!) from the CME trenches. Each week I crack open insightful conversations with industry rockstars on adult learning secrets, killer outcomes frameworks, and the hottest healthcare trends. For medical writers, there's more! Monday Mentor sessions are your personal power-up sessions. I spill the tea on proven techniques and insider secrets for crafting CME content that will inspire and arm you with the tools to create unforgettable learning experiences. Whether you're a CME newbie or a seasoned pro, Write Medicine is your one-stop shop to become a CME writing Jedi. ️✨ Don't just listen to Write Medicine—devour it. Your CME will never be the same.
Even those of us who’ve had surgery probably haven’t given much thought to the person who put us under and carefully monitored us while the surgeon did their work. I’m here today with anesthesiologist, author, and test pilot Dr. David Alfery to discuss his book, Saving Grace: What Patients Teach Their Doctors About Life, Death, and the Balance in Between, which was published by Wipf and Stock earlier in 2023. David was a cardiac anesthesiologist for over 30 years, taking patients to the brink of death and back during surgery.
A cardiac anesthesiologist, Dr. Alfery reveals to readers of his book the critical role of the “total stranger [who] would take them closer to death than they would ever come in this life, then bring them safely back."
David’s book explores the highs and lows of being an anesthesiologist, including his personal experience during his own daughter’s surgery. In this episode, we explore fears, aspirations, and motivations of health professionals and how to create and maintain sacred trust between physicians and their patients.
David shared 3 powerful takeaways:
1️⃣ Human connection is key: The doctor-patient relationship is a unique space that amplifies all the things that make us human and connect us. Empathy, gratitude, and perspective are the vital keys in our interactions with others.
2️⃣ Corporate medicine has negatively impacted teamwork in the OR by pressuring faster case turnover and high staff turnover. Teams that know each other work more smoothly together.
3️⃣ Trust and touch: Trust is at the core of the physician-patient relationship, and touch plays a crucial role in building that trust. Yet, there has been a shift in the reception of touch by patients. Personal space and boundaries are more important than ever, and it's essential for healthcare professionals to be respectful and mindful of this.
David D. Alfery. Saving Grace: What Patients Teach their Doctors about Life, Death, and the Balance in Between. Resource Publications. 2023. [this affiliate link earns the podcast a small commission at no additional cost to you]
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If you are an education provider tasked with designing virtual education, or you work with providers involved in online group learning and experiences, today's episode is a must-listen.
Gwyn Wansbrough is a facilitator who designs and leads interactive online sessions. Gwyn shares how to run effective and engaging live online sessions and guide a group to achieve a specific outcome.
The more we talked, the more I realized that the preparation process for facilitation is akin to conducting a needs assessment and designing an education activity. We need to get to know our audience of learners, identify their gaps in knowledge or practice, and find out what they need to know and be able to do in order to make that education as concrete and meaningful as possible.
Here’s what we cover:
✔️ It’s the job of a facilitator to make it easy for a group to achieve an outcome. Facilitators can design an effective process by focusing on the purpose, audience, and desired transformation for the group.
✔️ How psychological safety encourages participants to actively contribute versus passively receive content.
✔️ How using an "ask then tell" approach taps into what adult learning research tells us about the power of connecting content to experience.
✔️ If you are new to the facilitation process, build your confidence by starting small with low-risk experiments—like sprinkling facilitation into content delivery.
Resources
➡️ Exceptional Virtual Facilitator Workshop on September 7, 2023. Registration details here. ➡️ The Quest: Subscribe for weekly facilitation tips and tricks
➡️ Breakthrough Facilitation: A cohort-based course designed to teach the art of facilitation, September 26th to October 26th. This affiliate link earns the Write Medicine podcast a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Experiential/transformative learning theorists
➡️ Here’s a great overviewof John Dewey’s education philosophy
➡️ Background to Jack Mesirow’s work on transformational learning
➡️ Background to David Kolb’s work on experiential learning
Support the show📍Grab the WriteCME Roadmap
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Sarah Nelson PhD is a medical writer and founder of Green Pen Solutions Ltd. She is a leading mentor and trainer for medical writers all over the world. Her mission is to encourage more medical writers into Medcomms and help them create a sustainable career path that builds on their personal strengths.
Sarah's wide-ranging knowledge comes from over 17 years as a medical writer, her experience leading large editorial teams, and from mentoring writers in over 20 agencies across the medcomms industry.
In today’s episode, we focus on the importance of training for medical writers, medical writing tests, Sarah’s five pillars of medical writing, and the impact of artificial intelligence in medcomms. We also touch on the differences between Medcomms in general and the specific requirements of accredited CME/CE, at least in the United States.
ResourcesGreen Pen Solutions Green Pen Solutions YouTube ChannelMedComms networking
➡️ Sarah is hosting a brand new medical writing course with coaching. In September, combine access to the course with membership to the next 12-week Agency Ready coaching group.
➡️ For more specific information on how CME/CE is changing in Europe and in the UK, check out episode 55 with Eugene Poznak of the European CME forum.
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Welcome back to the Write Medicine podcast! Before we get into today’s topic on the power of experience in learning, I wanted to share with you a message from Mallory Kane. Mallory is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Connecticut who is creating an anthology of essays based on testimonies from people whose lives have been impacted by cancer. Whether you are a patient or survivor, a family member or caretaker, she wants to hear from you. She is using this anthology to highlight the experience of living with this disease.
Mallory’s looking for 1–3-page essays (max 1500 words) answering the following prompt:
What lesson have you learned from your experience with cancer that you want others to know?You can send your submissions to Mallory via email to makane@uchc.edu or via this form.
Adult learning is a complex process and we all want to think our CME/CE content measures up to the challenge. So today’s episode focuses on learning by doing and learning through experience.
But first, let's talk about building libraries and the American philosopher John Dewey.
ResourcesRead a version of this episode here.
Ready to turbocharge your facilitation skills?
Next week my guest is Gwyn Wansbrough, who hosts Breakthrough Facilitation, an online course that provides personalized coaching, support, and feedback to fast-track your journey to becoming an exceptional virtual facilitator.
If you are interested in learning more about Breakthrough Facilitation, Gwyn is hosting a demo on Sept 7th. Learn more here.
But if you're ready to jump in, you can save $300 by using my affiliate link. Join the Breakthrough Facilitation by clicking here (affiliate link).
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Welcome to the season finale of the Write Medicine podcast!
Today's episode was supposed to be live on LinkedIn, but we encountered some tech hiccups linking Riverside.fm to LinkedIn Live. Fret not! We recorded the episode for you, and it's available right here and on your favorite podcast platforms. We're looking forward to our first live episode, which we've rescheduled for the opening of Season 6 on August 30.
Launched 2 1/2 years ago, Write Medicine has evolved into the go-to podcast for professionals in the continuing medical education/continuing education for health professionals (CME/CE) field, packed with insightful interviews about the intricacies of designing and delivering health professional education. Thanks to listeners like you, Listen Score ranks Write Medicine as one of the top 10% most popular shows out of over 3 million podcasts worldwide.
Season 5 was packed with interviews featuring professionals from diverse backgrounds, to explore topics such as outcomes analysis, needs assessments, and diversity. Expect an exciting lineup in Season 6, including experts from online learning, instructional design, and niche topics such as the climate impact of digital content creation.
Season 5 has been a joy, and we're excited about the road ahead. Don’t forget to grab our WriteCME Roadmap bundle, specially crafted for medical writers. And if you have questions or topics you'd love us to cover in Season 6, reach out using the survey below.
RESOURCES AND LINKS
- WriteCME Roadmap
- What questions do you want the show to answer? Ask here.
- Howson A. Practical Strategies for Creating CME/CE Content: Insights From Adult Learning Scholarship. AMWA Journal. 2023, 38(2).
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If you’re a pharmacist you are probably going to have thoughts about today’s episode. I’m joined by pharmacist and Director of Pharmacy at Minnesota Oncology, Kirollos Hanna Pharm.D. I first met Kirollos at the end of 2020 in the context of an end-of-year report on oncology trends for the Association of Community Cancer Centers, that included a series of focus groups with ACCC members. I was deeply impressed by Kirollos’s humanity, clarity, and pragmatism, and if you don’t know Kirollos, I think you will be too.
In this episode, we talk about the challenges and opportunities for pharmacists transitioning from clinical to non-clinical roles and explore the different roles pharmacists can take on in non-clinical settings, such as creating educational content or working in the pharmaceutical industry.
Kirollos highlights the unique value that pharmacists bring to education and the importance of foundational knowledge in specialized areas like oncology pharmacy. But we also talk about the challenges pharmacists face every day and the evolving nature of the pharmacy field.
Join us as we delve into the world of pharmacy and explore the possibilities for pharmacists as educators and their unique contribution as educators to continuing education in the health professions.
Connect with Kirollos
Kirollos is also Assistant Professor of Pharmacy at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Associate Editor for the Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology (JADPRO).
Email: kirollos11@gmail.com
AcronymsAdvanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and OncologyNational Comprehensive Cancer NetworkBoard Certified Oncology Pharmacists Education VendorsMedscapeOncLive Pharmacy Times
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As an accidental educator, Andrew Crim MEd, CHCP is a seasoned expert in designing educational programs for healthcare professionals. He’s the Director of Education and Professional Development at the American College of Osteopathic Obstetricians and Gynecologists and is deeply passionate about the effect that high-quality education can have on patient outcomes. As an early adopter of Chat GPT, Andrew recognizes the potential of this technology to transform the way healthcare professionals access and engage with CME content. So in this episode, we’re exploring the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT to revolutionize CME—from writing entire grant proposals to chatbots providing practice and feedback to learners. And of course, we talk about the limitations of generative AI.
💡 Idea to try
- Check out Chat GPT and experiment with its capabilities
🧭 Resource to explore
- Visit the American College of Osteopathic Obstetricians and Gynecologists website for more information on their education and professional development programs.
📱Follow Andrew Crim on LinkedIn for updates and insights on the latest developments in CME and AI.
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"There's great potential and power in acknowledging this. It's self to self, self to others single, self to others plural, and self to others at the macro level. You begin to appreciate how beautiful it can be all around you, how much we all need help, and how very related we are in our own ways."In episode 62, Dr. Leigh Boehmer emphasizes the crucial role of self-awareness in understanding and practicing intersectionality, which goes beyond recognizing one's own complexities and involves acknowledging the unique layers of others.
Leigh is the Chief Medical Officer for the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) and is responsible for assessing educational needs and designing interventions for multidisciplinary cancer care teams serving patients in community oncology programs and practices. He also serves as a liaison with external stakeholders, including patient advocacy organizations, policy experts, and governmental agencies, to advance the objectives of the ACCC membership and projects.
Leigh describes how ACCC responded to health disparities that were exacerbated by the pandemic, and how it acted as a convener to connect individual community needs with the mechanisms necessary to address inequities. Finding ways to enhance human connection and practice empathy becomes even more crucial as technology continues to advance, with the rise of big data, AI, and machine learning.
Leigh highlights ACCC initiatives that foster connection and build equity such as the ACCC-ASCO implicit bias training program, which, combined with a clinical trial site self-assessment tool increased knowledge among participants of health disparities and strategies to address implicit bias and diversity in cancer clinical trials. The FDA requirement for the pharmaceutical industry to develop Diversity Action Plans from July 2023 is an additional, granular step toward addressing diversity and the broader social, political, and economic issues affecting cancer care.
Join us for a conversation about how continuing education, professional development, and the oncology community can give form to intersectionality and equity by asking the right questions, bringing the right people to the table, and listening.
Connect with Leigh
Email: lboehmer@accc-cancer.org
Association of Community Cancer CentersLinkedIn ResourcesBarret N, et al. An Assessment of the Feasibility and Utility of an ACCC-ASCO Implicit Bias Training Program to Enhance Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Cancer Clinical Trials. JCO Oncol Pract. 2023 Apr;19(4):e570-e580.
Guerra C et al. Increasing Racial and Ethnic Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Cancer Treatment Trials: Evaluation of an ASCO-Association of Community Cancer Centers Site Self-Assessment. JCO Oncol.Pract. 2023;19(4): e581-e588.
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In today's episode, I have a conversation with Sapana Panday, a medical education specialist with over two decades of experience. Sapana shares how her background in public health and evaluation research led her to work in medical education, particularly in areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
About Sapana
Sapana earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Mount Holyoke College and a Master’s in Public Health, Socio-Medical Sciences, from Columbia University. She brings a unique perspective from her upbringing in the developing nation of Nepal where education was a privilege afforded by the few, to her days as a health educator in the troubled schools of New York City. Over the years, she’s designed innovative educational formats, often leading the charge in introducing new concepts to medical education. She is a frequent speaker at many conferences and an advocate for integrating DEI efforts in CME.
Integrate DEI
Sapana emphasizes the importance of integrating DEO policies into both continuing education for health professionals and continuing education workplaces.
Start with Faculty
For instance, faculty policies represent one core area that can benefit from an integrated DEI approach that considers the characteristics of the people contributing expertise to the design and development of content. A simple statement that outlines the organization's commitment to DEI sets a foundation for ensuring that faculty members reflect diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Avoid Performative Allyship
We also explore how to avoid performative allyship and howself-evaluation and internal reflection are important crucial steps toward creating a more diverse and inclusive environment in continuing healthcare education.
Cultivate Communication Channels
And in that context, Sapana cautions on how to avoid making the assumption that individuals from diverse backgrounds can speak for an entire group in general. She emphasizes instead, the value of cultivating channels to share diverse voices and opinions.
Connect with Sapana
Email: sapana.panday@gmail.com
LinkedIn
Resources
The Lancet Group’s commitments to gender equity and diversity
Ten steps to gender equity: The BMJ’s resolutionsUnconscious Bias Drives Your Decision-Making. Here's How to Take Control
Produced by Golden Goose Creative
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Simulated case-based educational formats allow radiologists to develop their skills in a safe environment, learning from experts without the risks involved in clinical care.
This is exactly what Medality specializes in offering its learners.
On today’s episode, Dr. Deanna Heier, Ph.D., Head of Educational Strategy and Operations at Medality, shares how the company replicates side-by-side training through asynchronous and synchronous learning options and uses performance outcomes to enhance this approach to medical education.
While the microlearning model offers asynchronous, flexible case-based learning, faculty provide personalized feedback on both clinical and communication skills via synchronous learning.
Join us for a conversation about mentorship, using productivity metrics to assess outcomes and gauge the confidence, accuracy, and efficiency of learners, and how Medality is partnering with the American Association of Women and Radiology to diversify its faculty and balance out this male-dominated field.
Connect with Deanna
Email: dheier@medality.com
LinkedIn
Medality Resources
American Association for Women in Radiology
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✨ Focus Your Writing with Ben Riggs ✨Join Ben Riggs for a WriteCME Pro Expert Perspective session on how to focus your writing and create focused content for busy health professionals.
When: June 21, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT
Where: Live online
How: Buy a ticket for the event + 1 month of WriteCME Pro
__________________________
If content is King, learning culture must be Queen, as the latter goes a long way to determining learner outcomes. Frustrated with many years of check-box top-down broadcast learning culture, Andrew Barry founded Curious Lion and built a better way to effect behavior change by fostering progressive and transformative learning cultures.
In this episode, Andrew outlines the building blocks required for a successful learning culture.
✔️ Shared vision
✔️ Collaborative peer-to-peer team learning
✔️ Personal mastery & individual accountability
✔️ Systems thinking
Andrew invests heavily in building motivation through the self-determination theory of competence, relatedness, and autonomy, as he believes self-determination lies at the heart of behavior change. He recommends that creating learning cultures involves interventions at both the micro and macro levels, focusing on both the individual and company culture. We discuss the importance of developing life-long reflective learners and the circle of learning.
Connect with Andrew
Founder & CEO, Curious Lion
Email: andrew@curiouslionlearning.com
LinkedIn
Resources
Total Enablement ScorecardAgency for Healthcare Research and QualityLearning Health SystemsPeter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (shared vision and systems thinking)
Deci EL, Ryan R M. Self-determination theory: A macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health. Canadian Psychology . 2008;49(3): 182–185
MySnapshot
Produced by Golden Goose Creative
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Whether you are an education provider working with a distributed team or a freelance writer working with multiple clients, connecting with your colleagues, peers, and clients is key.
The goal of CME is to support health professionals in their work, and empathy is a key factor in creating content that connects with learners and supports them in their learning. Today I’m taking a deeper dive into connection to explore why it’s important in CME and to offer some different ways to foster connection with clients, colleagues, and content.
To apply empathy to content creation, you can create content in multiple formats and provide access to that content in multiple ways. For instance, if the primary format is a podcast, including a transcript for people who prefer to read can be helpful. It's important, too, to identify the factors that motivate learners to participate in the educational activity and use these motivation factors to help learners connect with the content. Self-determination theory can be a helpful framework here as a reminder that adult learners need to feel autonomous, competent, and connected to what they're learning, as well as to the people they're learning with.
We can also offer choices in the activity content and ensure the expectations for learners are succinct and clear and cultivate an audience mindset. By gathering feedback and engaging in dialogue with learners we can better understand what's important to them and create content that connects on a deeper level.
✔️ Only connect
✔️ Focus on relationship building
✔️ Cultivate empathy in CME planning, designing, and writing
✔️ Cultivate an audience mindset
Focus Your Writing with Ben Riggs
Related Podcast EpisodesConscious Communication in Content Creation
Mentoring You, Mentoring Me: Reciprocity and Relationships
Cultivating a Visual Mindset: Infographics in Continuing Healthcare Education
ArticlesDeci EL, Ryan R M. Self-determination theory: A macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health. Canadian Psychology . 2008;49(3): 182–185
Gohil S, Vuik S, Darzi A. Sentiment Analysis of Health Care Tweets: Review of the Methods Used. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2018;4(2):e43Guevara K et al. Busting myths in online education: Faculty examples from the field. J Clin Trans Sci.2021; 5(1): e149.
CAST. Universal Design for Learning Guidelines.
Produced by Golden Goose Creative
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Recently I read Tornado of Life: A Doctor’s Journey Through Constraints and Creativity in the ER by Jay Baruch, MD. It's a collection of linked essays, so you can dip into the book in small, snatched moments without losing momentum. If you need an introduction to the always challenging, sometimes messy, but ultimately humanizing work that clinicians do at the acute end of care, this is a great start.
Jay is a physician and writer who explores how creativity in medicine supports empathy, the cornerstone of clinical care. He is a practicing emergency room physician, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, and the author of two award-winning short fiction collections.
In his latest book, Jay interrogates the messy spaces of clinical practice and the art of caring for patients. Today we are talking about connections between writing, healing, and clinical care. We discussed Jay's experience of writing the book, the experiences that led to writing the book, and the ways that writing can help us figure out who we are and what we think and feel.
Alan Bleakley, Emeritus Professor of Medical Education and Medical Humanities at the University of Plymouth calls Tornado of Life the best medical memoir he's read. I can only agree and encourage you to read the book, too.
Why? Because it'll expand your concept of the healthcare team to include "the regular players already there, humanity scholars, writers, artists, and designers."
And it'll expand your idea of what CME can do too.
ResourcesBaruch J. Tornado of Life: A Doctor’s Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2022. Baruch J, Springs S, Poterack A, Ganz Blythe S. What Cy Twombly’s Art Can Teach Us About Patients’ Stories. AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(5):E430-436. Baruch J. Doctors as Makers. Acad Med.2017;92(1): 40-44.
Deavere Smith A. Talk to Me. Travels in Media and Politics. Anchor. 2001.
Scarry E. The Body in Pain. Oxford: OUP, 1987.
Schulz K. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error. Harper Collins. 2011.
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Transforming our own habits is notoriously challenging and changing clinical practice habits even more so. But my guest today shares strategies that CME practitioners can apply to education design and implementation based on understanding clinician readiness to change.
Sara Johnson PhD is a leading expert in behavior change science. Along with Dr. Kerry Evers, she is co-President and CEO of Pro-Change Behavior Solutions, a behavior-change consulting firm and solution provider that empowers people to experience life-changing breakthroughs in health and well-being. Sara also co-edits the American Journal of Health Promotion (AJHP) and contributes to the Knowing Well, Being Well practitioner-focused section focusing on emerging trends in health promotion and well-being.
Sara's been refining the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of change for over two decades and in our conversation she explains how to apply the five stages of change (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance) to understand readiness for change as a foundation for clinician-focused education as well as multi-level community-based education.
To this end, Sara shares insights from the Communities United Together for Health enterprise, a multi-level initiative addressing health disparities around diabetes in Black communities, inspired by a collaboration with Dr. Stephen Thomas from the University of Maryland Center for Health Equity.
Connect with SaraProChange Behavior SolutionsLinkedIn
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Ready for a tour of the European Continuing Medical Education environment?
Eugene Pozniak is Managing Director and CEO of Siyemi Learning, an independent medical education provider established in 2006. In fact, Siyemi Learning is the first non-US organization to be accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and is uniquely also accredited on the other side of the Atlantic by the European Board for Accreditation of Continuing Education for Health Professionals (EBAC).
Eugene left the promotional sector in 2000 and has since worked exclusively in CME-CPD, initially devising, and delivering e-learning for the European Society of Cardiology and the Federation of European Cancer Societies. He was Director of Global CME (ex-US) at Wolters Kluwer Health, before setting up Siyemi Learning and the European CME Forum.
Eugene describes a disparate European CME landscape, driven by national requirements and split by specialties within countries. We explore accreditation similarities and differences between Europe and the US. For example, while European activity-based accreditation systems embrace a granular, structured approach focusing on the format and organization of the educational activity, US accreditation allows comparatively more flexibility to deliver innovative education.
We also discuss the European CME Forum, cofounded by Eugene alongside Peter Llewellyn in 2008, which facilitates open discussion amongst all stakeholder groups and promotes a high standard of CME in Europe. Eugene also set up the Journal of CME (JCME), an open-access, peer-reviewed journal with a global focus on all aspects of CME-CPD, and is a founding member of the Good CME Practice Group.
CME Practice and Accreditation Stakeholders in Europe
- The European Accreditation Council of CME (EACCME) of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS). EACCME is run by UEMS.
- The European Board for Accreditation of Continuing Education for Health Professionals (EBAC)
- The European CME Forum
- The Good CME Practice group (gCMEp)
- The International Academy for CPD Accreditation
ResourcesJournal of CME
Good CME Practice group
European CME Forum Connect with Eugene
email: epozniak@CMEforum.org
LinkedInSiyemi Learning
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Instructional designers are the architects of learning experiences.
In this episode, Parker Grant PhD, the co-founder of IDLance, an instructional design freelance agency, discusses the learning process, how to use learners’ experiences to optimize education, and where instructional designers go for their story inspiration.
Parker advises, “In adult learning, what's really important to know, is that all learning is experiential. What makes learning better is having a multifaceted approach, meaning you don't look at just any one mode of learning as the optimum, but the combination of many facets.”
To these ends, Parker uses concept maps to create learning experiences. He finds that mental models help individuals to visualize other perspectives and shift mental models, thus encouraging consistent performance and improving outcomes.
Parker describes the core characteristics of well-designed learning activities that allow us to deliver rich learning experiences for healthcare professionals and we discuss how simulations and case studies can enhance the learning experience through feedback and building consequences into the virtual experience.
Resources
Genter D. Holyoak KJ, Kokinov BN. (eds) The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science. The MIT Press. 2001.
Stevens AL, Gentner D. Mental Models. NY: Psychology Press. 2014.
7taps Microlearning Platform
Arist
Connect with Parker
Email: pgrant@idlance.com
IDLanceLinkedIn
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What qualities do medical writers need? This is a question I'm frequently asked.
In this episode, expect to hear some robust answers—whatever your niche, specialty, or area of focus.
Holly Hagan MSc, Success Coach for Medical Writers, believes that all medical writers require diplomacy, intellectualism, inquisitiveness, and resourcefulness as fundamental qualities to thrive.
Authentically embodying moral and civic character lies central to her approach to medical writing. In addition, Holly maintains that personal branding goes deeper than your background banner, understanding personal brand to encompass the experience of your every interaction with colleagues and customers.
She advocates that employees and freelancers would benefit from adopting a service mindset. Shifting to a service mindset also allows writers to reframe the taboo surrounding sales into one where we understand and fulfill the customer's needs. Holly advises beginner writers to remain vigilant about opinions versus facts when considering what is possible and recommends using visualizations to stay focused on achieving your goals.
Holly suggests, "I find that it can be really powerful to separate the facts from opinions when it comes to your job search. That core belief will then change what sort of things you see in the visible world."
Connect with Holly
Email: holly@hollyhagan.ca
Top Medical WriterLinkedInHolly is presenting at the AMWACarolinas spring conference: Learn more
Resources
Clifton Strengths
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In this episode of Write Medicine, the tables are turned as I’m interviewed by guest host Holly Hagan. We talk about my own personal journey into CME writing, including how joining the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions was a turning point in my business. Being a part of this community has given me the opportunity to learn about new developments in the field and connect with education providers.
We discuss how I’ve integrated my previous experience and interests into my work, some key learnings when it comes to running my own business, and I share some of my favorite recommendations for academics or medical professionals who want to explore a career in CME writing.
And on May 5, 2023, I’ll return the favor and interview Holly about her expertise in medical marketing and copywriting.
Connect with AlexLinkedInWebsiteCourses, Community, Coaching
Connect with HollyLinkedInHolly is presenting at the AMWACarolinas spring conference: Learn more
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If you've been in the CME field for more than a hot minute, you'll know that Graham McMahon MD, MMSc is a medical educator, researcher, and practicing endocrinologist. He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME®) and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at Northwestern University.
Today, we're talking about integrity and trust in CME. We dig into the factors that prompted the publication in 2020 of ACCME's report on standards for integrity and independence in CME, especially the emergence of potential threats to content credibility. Graham emphasizes the importance of nurturing innovation and retaining balance in education and points to the role of content validity as a core part of ACCME's standards and promise to the community of physician learners.
We also talk about the centrality of trust in the process of teaching and learning, how the concept of an educational home fosters trust among physician learners and the work to be done in the CME community to ensure safe learning spaces and create education that is diverse in focus, content, and faculty contribution.
ResourcesAccreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME®). Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. 2020.
McMahon GT. Changes to the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Continuing Medical Education. JAMA. 2021
Sklar DP, McMahon GT. Trust between teachers and learners.JAMA. 2019;321(22): 2157-2158
Connect with GrahamAccreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education
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Clinicians, academics, or researchers transitioning into freelance medical writing—whether it's CME-focused or not—often worry about whether it’s the right move to make and whether there will be enough work to support their goals.
In today’s episode, long-time freelance medical writer Jonathan Agnew PhD, MBA brings a sense of reassurance to these questions and emphasizes the potential for abundantly available work. In addition, he shares tools and techniques to facilitate the freelance process.
Notably, Jonathon’s mantra is “your mindset underpins your success.” He recommends that you avoid the perfectionist mindset many clinicians and academics are prone to and instead strive for excellence and quality.
These goals will give you permission to take risks and enjoy the benefits of autonomy.
And Jonathan recommends defining quality simply. he says the best metric of success as a freelancer is getting paid and learning to value yourself fairly is a vital business mindset.
Connect with Jonathan
email: jonathan@agnewmedical.com
LinkedInWebsite
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Christine Welniak is an independent medical writer who specializes in cardiology and diabetes. She values opportunities to develop content that helps healthcare providers learn about new treatments that could improve patient outcomes. Christine contends that "content is king" and is central to producing high-quality CME/CE writing. Learning the art of the pitch in her previous life on Wall Street, Christine is well-equipped to discuss why CME/CE medical writers require skills in negotiation and strategy.
Although CME/CE writers are sometimes undervalued in terms of remuneration, it's possible to achieve above-average market rates. Christine observes that writers who do so demonstrate skills above and beyond excellent writing, such as strategy, analysis, or comfort in talking with faculty members.
To this end, Christine highlights her top tips for approaching negotiation and empowering yourself to talk about money with ease.
- Be honest, direct, and listening
- Define your non-negotiables upfront
- Learn the language suitable for money conversations
- Practice getting comfortable talking about money
Connect with ChristineLinkedIn
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The medical and CME writers I teach often worry about how to rein in a tendency to burrow into the rabbit hole.
If you're a medical writer, I'm sure you know what I mean. That tendency to get led into or follow the delicious temptations of information, data, and stories that bear a family resemblance to the project you're working on, but are not quite on track.
The stories that are fascinating and feed your mind, but don't necessarily move your project any closer to a conclusion.
Like you, I’m up against the challenge of the rabbit hole too.
But instead of seeing rabbit holes as something that derails us, perhaps it's possible to view them as gifts. In today's episode, I share a process that accommodates the pleasure of following where the rabbit hole leads and supports the time frame you typically have to do your work.
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The CME/CE field has increased its focus on outcomes over the last decade. As a result, outcomes reports now involve a more bespoke process, showcasing more detailed targeted data presented in a visually appealing way.
Angelique Vinther CHCP is an independent data and outcomes consultant who has specialized in IME reporting for 14 years. She focuses primarily on data collection and analysis methodologies, test question-writing best practices, and reports that communicate clear messaging and data transparency.
In today’s episode of Write Medicine, we discuss best practices that education providers can use to evaluate the effectiveness of their CME/CE programs and how to use outcomes to inform decision-making. We explore solutions to education providers' main challenges in developing robust outcomes frameworks, like establishing an efficient process that allows time to evaluate the quality of feedback and think creatively about activity design.
Connect with AngeliqueLinkedIn Familiarity with outcomes is core to writing needs assessments.Next Level Needs Assessments is open for enrollment.
You’ll learn how to write lean, agile needs assessments with the help of deliberate practice, peer-to-peer discussion, and expert feedback.
Runs April 3-May 12, 2023
Ready to level up your needs assessment writing strategy? Learn more.
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The content creation process in continuing education for health professionals (CEHP) combines both art and science. As a result, creating content for continuing education attracts people who are synthesizers, information seekers, and creators—like academics, researchers, or health professionals looking for a career change.
In EP 46 we explore taking the leap from clinical work to medical writing with Esther Langmack, MD, a medical writer and CME consultant. Esther deliberately practiced her newly acquired skills while working as a clinician and medical director of the CME unit at an academic medical center. Tapping into her natural curiosity, she fostered connections and honed her skills by being open to feedback from experienced colleagues.
We talk about the creativity, flexibility, and autonomy that creating education content for health professionals offers and discuss clinicians' specific strengths in CME/CEHP medical writing.
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Diana Durham PhD, FACEHP is an accreditation strategist who has worked in CME/CPD since the 1990s. Diana has served in many leadership roles, including for the Veterans Health Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
We talk about the accreditation process in general and the evolution of joint accreditation in interprofessional continuing education (IPCE). And we consider how IPCE is evolving and the trends and impacts of accreditation bodies giving hospitals, healthcare systems, specialty societies, and medical schools a mechanism for joint accreditation. Diana shares her perspectives on creative methods of educating all members of the healthcare team such as Schwartz rounds, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Health Outcomes), and simulations.
ResourcesVolponeACCMEACCME Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education
Joint Accreditation
American Council for Pharmacy Education
American Nurses Credentialing Center
American Academy of Physician Assistants
Council on Optometric Practitioner Education
American Dental Association
Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer Connect with DianaDianaJDurhamCPD@gmail.com
LinkedIn Connect with AlexPodcastLinkedInYouTube
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Medical research has the potential for far-reaching implications for individuals and society. Peer review remains the gold standard to ensure high-quality information. However, traditional journal submission involves an extensive process that is often costly, and time-consuming process.
Mark Riotto is the founder and president of The Research Post, a peer-reviewed, open-access publishing channel. Mark shares his insights on medical publishing and his campaign to promote a more visual experience for disseminating clinical data in a timely fashion. Mark considers the barriers to accessible, digestible information and we explore the advantages of the visual medium in an increasingly transparent publishing process. ResourcesThe Nelson Memo: Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research Connect with MarkTheResearchPost
LinkedIn
Facebook: @theresearchpost
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Sedentary lifestyles pose significant well-being challenges to western cultures. For example, prolonged periods at a desk affect posture, mental and physical health, and stress levels. Those of us working in continuing medical education and continuing education for health professionals are no exception to these risks and we can all benefit from a proactive approach to injury prevention.
Eva Stabenow, a medical writer and German translator specializing in health and wellness communication, shares her insights with us today. After years of searching Eva found relief from chronic work-related pain by re-patterning her movements with Pilates. When she realized many of her fellow desk workers were facing the same challenges, she set out to help them. Today, in addition to keeping a full-ish writing and translation schedule, she empowers people of all ages and abilities to move better, feel better and live better through targeted 1-1 sessions and affordable online group classes.
In addition to helping people understand complex health content using plain language, Eva physically conveys her passion for health and health communication by teaching Pilates—a low-impact activity that balances strength with mobility and flexibility, so that you can move more freely and with more power.
We discuss the following topics:
✔️ Who benefits from Pilates, and what are those benefits
✔️ Preconceptions of flexibility, mobility, and strength training
✔️ What to look for in a Pilates instructor
✔️ Pilates role in bridging the gap between physical therapy and return to regular workouts
Resources
- Is Pilates as Good as Everyone Says?
- Pilates Method Alliance
- Pilates Anytime
- 5 Pilates Exercises for Fibromyalgia Symptoms
Connect with EvaYou can find and follow her at Sunroom Pilates.
email: info@sunroompilates.com
Message Eva and mention this podcast to try a free class!
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Storytelling cultivates authentic connections and inspires curiosity in our audiences. At the same time, arousing emotions can enhance the learning experience in professional development and continuing education scenarios, like continuing medical education/continuing education in the health professions (CME/CEHP).
Today with Ben Riggs, author, writing coach, and Senior Communication Specialist for Kettering Health, Write Medicine considers how to use storytelling in the health professional education field.
We focus on the importance of understanding the constituent parts of the writing process and understanding audience needs by first defining who they are.
Connect with Ben
LinkedIn
ResourcesRiggs B. Tell Them a Story. Using narrative nonfiction in your everyday writing. NY: Editorial Freelancers Association. WordRake: Writing Professionals on LinkedIn to Follow
Pepper Content:15 Freelance Writers You Should Follow on Linkedin for Inspiration
Clear Writing Q&A
Get Started on Your Writing Journey
The Importance of Powerful Storytelling in Writing
When we were talking about ideas/"leafmold," Ben mentioned an essay he wrote about walking his dog, Lewie. Here's the essay.
Ben's recommendations for d books on writing:
- Elements of Style (Strunk &White)
- Writing Tools and Help! for Writers (Roy Peter Clark)
- On Writing Well and Writing to Learn (William Zinsser)
- The Reader, the Text, the Poem (Louise Rosenblatt)
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In this bonus episode of Write Medicine I talk with Ben Riggs about writing voice. Ben is Senior Communication Specialist for Kettering Health and author of Tell Them A Story.
He shares insights on three components that contribute to writing voice: level of formality, syntax and use of metaphor.
Connect with Ben
LinkedIn ResourcesRiggs B. Tell Them a Story. Using narrative nonfiction in your everyday writing. NY: Editorial Freelancers Association. WordRake: Writing Professionals on LinkedIn to Follow
Pepper Content:15 Freelance Writers You Should Follow on Linkedin for Inspiration
Clear Writing Q&A
Get Started on Your Writing Journey
The Importance of Powerful Storytelling in Writing
When we were talking about ideas/"leafmold," Ben mentioned an essay he wrote about walking his dog, Lewie. Here's the essay.
Ben's recommendations for d books on writing:
- Elements of Style (Strunk &White)
- Writing Tools and Help! for Writers (Roy Peter Clark)
- On Writing Well and Writing to Learn (William Zinsser)
- The Reader, the Text, the Poem (Louise Rosenblatt)
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The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) encourages the inclusion of the patient perspective within CME activities. And patient cases are a great way to meet this recommendation.
Allison Armagan, Pharm.D. a content and education director specializing in creating interactive patient cases, joins me in this episode to talk about how to create multifaceted, dynamic patient cases for education activities. She talks about how targeted patient cases provide ways for clinicians to experience a "real-life" scenario, allow them to practice their skills in a consequence-free environment, address patient needs, and identify gaps in their knowledge and skills.
Designing patient cases involves a LOT of research, starting with patient advocacy websites, clinical guidelines, and recent literature. Allison emphasizes the importance of understanding the patient's voice, in addition to the disease state information, and of the power of the narrative. to engage audiences by telling a memorable and enjoyable story.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed within the content are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Pfizer.
Resources
Episode 4 of Write Medicine focuses on writing patient cases with Scott Kober.
Allison mentioned I’m Aware That I’m Rare, a podcast on pulmonary hypertension.
Connect with AllisonLinkedIn Connect with AlexLinkedInWebsite
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Providers of accredited education for health professionals need to demonstrate that education activities have changed learner behavior and healthcare quality for the better.
One of the best ways to show positive change is via outcomes reports. In episode 39 of Write Medicine, Medical Writer and Certified CME Professional Andrew Bowser ELS, CHCP talks about outcomes. Andy is the owner and lead developer with IconCME, a content development and consulting firm in Philadelphia. We discuss the format of reports, who the audiences are for outcomes reports, and how the results can help education evolve and improve.
Andy describes the evolution of CME, outlines Moore’s Outcomes Framework for evaluating outcomes, and explores the increasing oversight of what constitutes accredited CME. We discuss the importance of narrative and telling a story within outcomes reporting and he recommends using visual cues to simplify the design and improve comprehension.
He says, “there's a lot of interesting and creative ways you can portray the data and help people comprehend the outcomes of an activity.”
The following acronyms are mentioned in our conversation.
- CME = Continuing Medical Education
- CE = Continuing Education
- CPD = Continuing Professional Development
Connect with AndyIconCME
LinkedIn
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Are you fearless in your marketing?
If not, I got good news for you.
Lori De Milto, author of The fearless Freelancer is talking with me on this episode of Write Medicine. We explore effective marketing for freelance writers and others working in medical communications, the importance of cultivating a freelance mindset, and how to embody grit, resilience, and confidence in your marketing. Wherever you are on your marketing journey, Lori will reassure you that you have the power to make your freelance future brighter by building relationships through networking. If you're in a marketing slump, or you don't know where to start, listen to the podcast, buy the book, and you will feel like and be in actuality, a fearless freelancer.
Lori highlights the importance of strategic networking to create work opportunities and stay front of mind for prospective clients. As we all know, LinkedIn is key to strategic networking. Lori explains the value of an optimized LinkedIn account as a networking tool and for researching potential clients.
We touch on the importance of adopting a growth mindset approach that includes grit, resilience, and confidence.
Lori reassures us we all have the power to make our freelance future brighter by building relationships through networking.
Connect with Lori
e: themightmarketer@comcast.netMighty Marketer
Lori De Milto Writer for Rent LLC
LinkedIn
Ready to level up your needs assessment writing strategy?
In Next Level Needs Assessments you’ll learn how to write lean, agile needs assessments with the help of deliberate practice, peer-to-peer discussion, and expert feedback.
Doors close January 31, 2023.
✴️ Grab your spot.✴️
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Continuing medical education planning usually includes a needs assessment.
But sometimes it’s pretty challenging to get to the root cause of clinical or professional practice gaps, because they are often multifactorial.
That’s where root cause analysis comes in.
In episode 37 of Write Medicine, Greg Salinas, PhD, President of CE Outcomes, discusses his unique approach to needs assessments using root cause analysis. He emphasizes that the literature tells us that practice gaps exist (the what), but that we learn more about why gaps exist through direct outreach to clinicians and other stakeholders.
We explore what root cause analysis involves, its benefits for CME needs assessments, and how to approach it using conversational interviews and qualitative analysis.
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Crystal Herron, PhD, ELS founder of Redwood Ink, is an editor, educator and coach. In this episode, she shares her insights into building relationships through supportive, mindful collaboration.
Crystal explains how cultivating a gentle and informative manner for feedback promotes longevity with clients. This mindful approach is evident in her informative website resources and newsletter, which are well worth checking out.
Crystal advises cultivating a communication skills mindset, with self-awareness and self-regulation at the center through the following:
- Slowing down when gathering information
- Allowing for curiosity
- Meditation
- Journaling, using the 5-minute morning and evening feedback practice (here's how Tim Ferriss uses this practice)
Crystal also counsels us to consider the emotions behind our writing and content creation. Understanding how our audience feels, not just their interests or knowledge base, allows us to form stronger connections with readers (and learners). Achieving this connection requires going beyond the text and cultivating direct interactions with readers and learners.
Resources for Developing Communication Skills
- Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- Nonviolent Communication: A language of life by Marshall Rosenberg
- The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer
- Mindset by Carol Dweck
- Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen
- Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
Connect with Crystal
LinkedInWebsite
NewsletterFreebies
Crystal is offering a 5% discount for her Scientific Writing Masterclass . Next session starts January 30. Registration closes January 23. The code does not expire.
Get the Code
Editing SoftwareText Expander Shortcuts: save time with snippets
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SponsorsCMEpalooza
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Community health improvement and improving healthcare quality are both Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Accreditation with Commendation criteria.
In this episode of Write Medicine, Heather Clemons, MS, MBA, ATC, CHCP shared how she and her colleagues at Sharp Grossmont Hospital, Mesa, California, mobilized quality improvement (QI), a community needs assessment, and continuing medical education (CME) to improve community health and clinical care.
As Heather describes, there are many facets to QI, including clinical analytics at the system level, performance improvement CME, and patient safety, which involves specialists to determine root cause analysis—which we’ll be exploring in Season 5 of the podcast.
We discuss how diversity, equality, and equity emerged as goals for Sharp Healthcare via a combination of an employee grassroots movement, California legislation, and a health system culture underpinned by an awareness of the social determinants of health and unconscious bias or stigma.
The confluence of these factors allowed Heather and her colleagues to build a unique CME and QI process, that included:
- Regular discussions in different formats to create a safe learning space
- A tri-annual community needs assessment
- An established process to validate gap analyses
- Proactively addressing community and clinician education needs through CME
As Heather says, improving community health and clinical care involves,
meeting people where they’re at, seeing them for who they are, meeting their needs the way they need them met. And that’s different for everybody.Resources
- U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module
- California Medical Association resources on Cultural & Linguistic Competency (AB1195) and Implicit Bias (AB241)
- California Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act (SB 464): resources on implicit bias and reproductive justice
- Community Health Needs Assessments Sharp HealthCare/San Diego
- Challenges
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We're getting a little meta here on Write Medicine—this is a podcast episode on the value of podcasts 😉
Did you know that podcasts are increasing in popularity in continuing healthcare education?
As I was researching this episode, I was astounded to see the enormous growth in the number of continuing education podcasts, and the number of clinicians using podcasts as part of their formal and informal learning. As of 2019, the last year for which I could find figures, there were 200 medical podcasts available online covering 19 specialties and almost 14,000 episodes.
And while many podcasts now offer CME and maintenance of certification credits through organizations like the American College of Physicians and the Society of Hospital Medicine, they are still relatively under-used as a CME format.
On this episode of Write Medicine I talk with Mike Donoghue, an enthusiastic podcast consumer who co-founded ConveyMED after recognizing that podcasts offer a great way to learn. As he put it (paraphrasing , when your eyes are busy, your mind is free.
We talk about how the ConveyMED platform delivers a novel podcast experience combining visual images alongside an audio experience, and touch on the challenges in setting up a podcast. ConveyMED partners with medical associations to provide content expertise and guides the design process to ensure a self-directed experience that includes:
- Conversational style discussions between experts
- Problem-centered content
- Material that is framed into short, accessible modules
As Mike explains,
This is how the mobile generation wants their content. So if you're an association, an academic medical centre, or another content creator and you're not doing podcasts, I would highly encourage you to think about it.Connect with Mike: mike@conveymed.io
Production Team
Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP: Host/Producer
Rhona Fraser BSc BVMS: Show notes➡️ Join the Write Medicine community
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Infographics offer a powerful tool in our education armamentarium.
We process images much faster than we do text, so visual communication saves time and allows more effective data retention.
On this episode of Write Medicine, I'm joined by Bhaval Shah PhD and Karen Roy MSc—co-founders of Infograph-Ed, a company delivering engaging visual communications in healthcare.
We talk about the power of visual communications in continuing healthcare education, how to develop a visual mindset and current trends in visual communications. We also discuss the design process and how to create effective visual communication through the following strategies:
- Communicate a value proposition
- Identify what your audience is looking for
- Deliver accessible member-driven content
- Evaluate your resources
- Analyze feedback to focus content on the audience's requirements.
Resources from Infograph-Ed and Others4-step plan: Designing Information with ImpactBetter Ways to Present Information and DataColor toolNightingale viz
McCandless D. Information is Beautiful. 2000. Collins.
Kirk A. Visualizing Datawebsite
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Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP: Host/Producer
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Podcasts continue to grow in popularity, and educational podcasts have multiplied in recent years. In addition, the trend towards mobile education and shorter, more focused activities will likely continue as millennials become the majority of the health care workforce.
On this episode of Write Medicine, I talk with Lisa Townsend, a marketing and communications professional working in healthcare associations and non-profit organizations. We discuss the developing role of both accredited and non-accredited continuing education podcasts and how they fit within the education provider's content portfolio in member-driven organizations and associations.
In particular, Lisa shares insights on how to:
- Communicate a value proposition
- Identify what your audience is looking for
- Deliver accessible member-driven content
- Evaluate your resources
- Analyze feedback to focus content on the audience's requirements.
Connect with Lisa
e: lisatownsend01@gmail.com
LinkedInTwitter
Connect with AlexTwitterLinkedIn
Production Team
Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP: Host/Producer
Rhona Fraser BSc BVMS: Show notes➡️ Join the Write Medicine community➡️ Fall Series: WriteCME Clinic
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Multi-disciplinary education has expanded in the last decade or so as a way to ensure that healthcare teams cooperate, coordinate care and communicate to make care more patient-centered, continuous and reliable.
On this episode of Write Medicine I talk with Lorna Lucas, MSM, a healthcare education professional and advocate for equitable healthcare. We discuss the role of multidisciplinary education in improving patient outcomes, the challenges in delivering and evaluating multidisciplinary education, and interventions that emerged during the early months of the COVID 19 pandemic to provide psychosocial support for both professionals and patients.
Lorna shares the need to focus on designing and delivering educational content in a holistic, equitable, and patient-centric way that fosters interdisciplinary collaborative practice.
She says, “We must look holistically at the team dynamic. It’s great to have everyone performing at the top of their medical discipline. However, coordinated care requires attention between the cracks.”
In this episode we talk about the importance of the following:
✔️ Local/onsite champions to support multidisciplinary education
✔️ Deep listening to perspectives in each discipline
✔️ Ensuring that everyone involved feels heard
✔️ Emphasizing a comprehensive team approach to address challenges, many of which are operational
✔️ Designing and delivering programs that work with everyone’s role in mind
We also touched on the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted existing disparities and inequities in education. She described how educators can play a role in providing psychosocial support for health professionals and how this support can improve patient outcomes.
Connect with Lorna
e: Lornapomicter@gmail.com
LinkedIn
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Hosted and produced by Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP➡️ Join the Write Medicine community➡️ Fall Series: WriteCME Clinic
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➡️ Needs Assessment Fall Workshop
This episode sponsored by CMEpalooza Fall
Ruwaida Vakil, MSc is a consultant, speaker and a medical writer with expertise in medical communications and continuing medical education (CME). Ruwaida earned her MSc in Immunology at the University of Toronto and the Ontario Cancer Institute. She moved into developing educational content over 21 years ago and is a highly experienced writer of needs assessments. She has developed an effective system for ensuring that these kinds of CME/CE deliverables are framed by fair balance, detail gaps in clinical practice, describe the likely education required to address those gaps, and foreshadow anticipated outcomes from education.
On this episode, Ruwaida shares valuable lessons for people considering a move into CME/CE writing, or for CME/CE writers who are considering working freelance.
✔️Establishing a CME/CE writing niche can be highly rewarding and sustainable especially if you establish yourself as an expert in writing needs assessments.
✔️Direct energy into marketing yourself as a CME/CE writer to ensure a steady stream of valuable and valued clients.
✔️Develop relationship management skills to ensure fair balance and content integrity.
✔️Use downtime to remain current in your specialist area. You can share new insights with clients and position yourself as a valuable partner in their work.
✔️Sales training and non-accredited education clients value CME writers as skilled content partners.
ResourcesRuwaida has generously shared a range of resources for listeners.
- AMWA Best Practices for Writing CME Needs Assessments(members only)
- Pocket Training Best Practices for Writing CME Needs Assessments
- Presentation: Best Practices for Writing and Editing Needs Assessments
- Downloadable Poster: A Survey of Best Practices in Writing and Editing CME Needs
- AMWA Blog: Best Practices for Writing CME Needs Assessments
Connect with Ruwaida
ProMed Write LLC e: ruwaida@promedwrite.com
LinkedInTwitter
Connect with AlexTwitterLinkedIn
Hosted and produced by Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP➡️ Join the Write Medicine community➡️ Fall Series: WriteCME Clinic
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➡️ Needs Assessment Fall Workshop
This episode sponsored by CMEpalooza Fall
In this episode of Write Medicine, I'm joined by Don Harting to talk about CME writing competencies. What are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that those writing CME/CPD content need to develop in order to create content that connects with and educates health professionals?
Medical writers often ask CME writers where to find training and how to get started in CME writing. Don says that clients share with him how challenging it is to find skilled writers for CME-related work. Don and his co-investigator Haifa Kassis think the medical writing field needs a competency model as a basis for training programs and skill-building that is directed toward the need for codified expertise in CME writing. They're using a Delphi process with a panel of experts to determine what those competencies might be.
We discussed:
✔️ Changing practices for writing needs assessments
✔️ What a competency model for CME/CPD writers might entail
✔️ Why a competency model for CME/CPD writers is important
✔️ Key deliverables for CME writers
✔️ The role of Delphi method in determining competencies—what it is and how it can be used
✔️ Ranking function in Delphi
✔️ Anticipated outcomes from the Delphi approach
✔️ Ethics and fair balance in content development
Resources
- Norman Dalkey and Delphi method
- Clemow D et al. Medical writing competency model—Section 1: Functions, tasks, and activities. Ther Innov Regul Sci. 2018;52(1):70-77
- Clemow D et al. Medical writing competency model—Section 2: Knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors. Ther Innov Regul Sci. 2018;52(1):78-88
- Lockyer J et al. Core principles of assessment in competency-based medical education. Med Teacher.2017;39(6).
- Khurana MP et al. Digital health competencies in medical school education: a scoping review and Delphi method study. BMC Med Ed. 2022;22(1):129
- ACCME Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education
Connect with DonTwitter#cmechat or #meded
Blog: Occasional posts on CME-related topics Connect with Alexwww.alexhowson.com
Join the Write Medicine communityFall Series: WriteCME Clinic
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Produced and hosted by Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP
This episode sponsored by CMEpalooza Fall 2022
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, the percentage of adults in the US who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has doubled in the last decade, and stands at 7.1%.
1 in 5 Gen Z adults identify as LGBT.
But health disparities persist among people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, or asexual and more (LGBTQA+).
And discrimination against LGBTQA+ people is a key social determinant of health that is linked with high rates of psychiatric disorders, substance abuse,and suicide. Discrimination is evident even as people in LGBTQA+ communities navigate healthcare.
My guest this episode is Dena Silva, an educator with a passion for creating education that enables clinicians to address the healthcare needs of LGBTQA+ communities. Dena is CME Director for an association management organization which includes oversight of 4 medical societies in California.
We talked about:
✔️ How to work with experts who really know about the challenges facing LGBTQA+ patients in health care
✔️ The role of education in supporting providers who are working with LGBTQA+ patients
✔️ What providers need to know in order to meet the health care needs of LGBTQA+ patients
✔️ Strategies to build more representative and inclusive education programs
✔️ How skilled facilitators are an asset
Straight Talk as a Starting Point
Sometimes the conversation was tricky (failing forward!). It's straight talk, after all, rather than talk among people who are LGBTQA+. We recognize that this conversation may be filled with things that we stumbled over.
But as Dena reminded me, in order to show up as an ally for LGBTQA+-affirming CME/CE, we need to learn how be sensitive about the ways we represent ourselves, the language we use, and the assumptions we make about who people are and what they need from healthcare providers. We welcome feedback for our own learning journey so we can improve the way we communicate about this topic and better advocate for LGBTQA+ health needs.
The CME community has an opportunity to create education programs that increase awareness around health disparities for LGBTQA+ patients and that equip clinicians with tools to have a conversation with their patients about how they would like to be addressed and what they need from their health care providers. CME/CE can offer a safe space for clinicians to mess up, to say the wrong thing, and to find a way to course correct in curious, compassionate, non-judgmental ways.
Without education leading the way, many clinicians will opt to not have this conversation at all.
ResourcesFenway Institute
National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center
Promoting Equitable and Inclusive Care: Healthcare Equality Index
Health Professionals Advancing LBGTQ Equality
Connect with Denaemail:dsilva@amgroup.us
Connect with AlexEmail: alex@alexhowson.com
LinkedIn Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP
Shownotes: Emma Kolakowski
Sound: SuZen Marie
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Jayzona Alberto EdD, MS began her continuing healthcare education career by working on curricula for dentists and other clinicians before transitioning to the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she currently serves as Assistant Director of Continuing Medical Education.
Jayzona and her team work with e-learning tools such as animations, and in this episode she walks us through the process of creating an animation from start to finish. We discuss the importance of building relationships with the faculty who inform education content, the resources for CME that an institution such as Stanford can provide, and the potential for changing clinical practice that well designed CME/CPD fosters.
Other topics we discussed include:
- Differences in assessing knowledge versus assessing clinical change
- The importance of cultivating soft skills as both a clinician and an education provider
- How online education is changing the parameters of what is possible in CME
- And how to raise the visibility of CME within clinical or academic organizations.
Resources
Septris
Connect with JayzonaEmail: jayzona.alberto@stanford.edu
LinkedIn Connect with Alexwww.alexhowson.comEmail: alex@alexhowson.com
LinkedIn Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP
Shownotes: Emma Kolakowski
Sound: SuZen Marie
You can support the podcast via Buy Me a Coffee!
On this episode of Write Medicine, my guest is Dr. Eve Wilson CHCP, FACEHP (she/her), a medical writer with deep expertise who helped me get started in the field.
While Eve is primarily a creator of continuing medical education resources, she also holds a PhD in microbiology, and uses her analytical background to inform her present-day work. As Medical Director at PlatformQ Health, Eve integrates new learning concepts with the more traditional didactic experiences to design a meaningful journey for the learner that leads to new insights as a result of their learning experience.
In this episode, we talk about career origins, and the significance of “story” in a seemingly facts-only field. We talk about the creation of curricula, how to find balance variation of content and format, and how to create and implement multimodal ways of learning.
Other topics covered in this conversation include how Eve:
✔️ Started in medical writing and what she tells aspiring writers
✔️ Preps for continuing education projects
✔️ Gauges audience needs and adapts content accordingly
Resources
- NBME Item Writing Guide
- Downloadable Planning Tool for Developing Multimodal CME
- Eve is running a professional workshop on Preparing CME Materials: Concepts, Strategies, and Ethical Issues, AMWA 2022 Conference: November 4 2022
Connect with Evee: ewilson@platformq.com
LinkedIn Connect with Alexe: alex@alexhowson.com
LinkedInWebsite
Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP
Shownotes: Emma Kolakowski
Sound: SuZen Marie
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Brian McGowan PhD, FACEP planned to be the team orthopedic surgeon for Notre Dame football. After a month of working in an orthopedic rehab hospital when he was in college, he realized that he didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up, but it wasn't going to be a physician.
Lucky then for us.
Brian has worked in academic, industry, and is co-founder of ArcheMedX. But the places he's been do not mark who Brian is. It's his passion for behavioral science, learning science, and research into medical education methodology that make him inimitable in the field of continuing education for health professionals.
Join us for a conversation about what continuing education practitioners can do to help learners think more efficiently and effectively. Points of interest include:
✔️ Which root skills are most important for CME storytellers
✔️ What the Ebbinghaus experiment is in learning science
✔️ How physical environments affect learning
✔️ Brian’s love for the three-slide-per-page print option for PowerPoints
Resources
- Brian’s reading list
- Alter A. Drunk Tank Pink and Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave. NY: Penguin, 2013.
- McGowan B. #SocialQI: Simple Solutions for Improving Your Healthcare. 2012.
- Milkman KL, et al. Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioral science. Nature. 2021;600:478-483.
- Murre JMJ, Dros J. Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PLOS One. 2015; 10(7): e0120644. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120644
- Roediger HL, III. Remembering Ebbinghaus. Cont Psych. 1985;30(7):519-523.
Connect with BrianArcheMedX
Twitter
LinkedIn
email: brian@archemedx.com
Connect with AlexTwitter
LinkedIn
email: alex@alexhowson.com
Today we're talking about ghostwriting. Not the ghostwriting that has been loaded with negative associations within medical writing circles for many years but a different kind of ghostwriting. The kind that gets your business to business or business to consumer book out the door. My guest, Wendy Meyeroff, has been ghostwriting for many years and is here to share what she has learned about what is is, how it has changed, who can benefit from the support of a ghostwriter, and what to look for when you are thinking of hiring a ghost writer.
If you didn't know about the world of ghostwriting before this episode, I think you'll agree that there's a lot to mull over here. If you need a writer to help you write a B2B or B2C book or other materials, you can learn more about how to hire a ghostwriter at Wendy's website, to which I've included a link in the show notes, as well as Claudia Suzanne's website, ghostwritertraining.com
Even if you are still on the fence about the value and credibility of ghostwriting, Wendy shares a wealth of detail about the craft of writing, its role in educating audiences, examples from ghostwriters who work in particular genres, like memoir, and a long list of resources on tools of the trade and where to find training.
Resources
Smithsonian Magazine
American Medical Writers Association
Council of Science Editors
Editorial Freelancers Association
Claudia Suzanne
Claudia Suzanne Ghost Writing Course
Derek Lewis
Lorraine Nash
Military Writers Society of America
Mark Agnew
Connect with Wendy: Email, LinkedIn
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
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Brenda Thompson is my guest on this episode of the podcast. Brenda has a background in counseling and education and is a longtime professional in the graduate medical education space. For the last year or so, Brenda has been working as a resident and fellow liaison, educating residents who are transitioning into practice about topics such as how to negotiate a physician's contract, how to prepare for the interview process, and how to form their professional identity for the community, their patients, and their colleagues.
Join the conversation to learn from Brenda about:
- The role of the physician liaison
- How Brenda and her colleagues teach newly minted physicians to stand out from the crowd, establish networks, create relationships, and negotiate contracts
- How continuing education can educate established physicians about the business side of medicine
- The need for health and well-being education for residents and fellows
ResourcesAccreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
American Medical Association
NIH Valerian Root & Lemon Balm Tea Study
Graduate Medical Education re[Think] re[Claim] re[Design] re[Create]: Memoir and Call to Action
ConnectBrenda: Twitter, Secondary Twitter, LinkedIn, Secondary LinkedIn
Alex: Twitter, LinkedIn, website
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Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
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Allison Kickel is Founder & President of Bonum CE. I kept coming across Allison at meetings and via LinkedIn posts and knew I wanted to have a conversation with her. She's smart—that goes without saying—as well as funny and warm. Most discernibly she thinks outside of the box and is unafraid to both challenge convention and try new things. It's perhaps unsurprising then that she has a background in visual arts—photography and design—and uses this to full effect in the context of designing education for consumption via a range of channels including learning management systems and social media.
Join us to explore the benefits of:
✅ Appreciation for design in education
✅ Thought diversity
✅ Social media based continuing education
Book RecommendationsThe Overstory
The Language of Kindness
ResourcesAmerican College of Gastroenterology
Global Education Group
Project ECHO
@MondayNightIBD
Episode 2 of Write Medicine on Design Thinking with Dr. Andrew Chacko
Connect with Allison: Twitter, Secondary Twitter, LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: LinkedIn, www.alexhowson.com
This episode's guest is no stranger to many of you in the world of continuing healthcare education. Lawrence Sherman FACEHP, CHCP is president of Meducate Global, LLC and describes himself as a learning facilitator, a global educator, and an education futurist. He is deeply committed to lifelong learning and to humor as a learning tool.
Join us for a conversation that touches on:
- Needs assessments as a continuum
- Skills required for moderation and collaboration
- Controversy about learning styles
- Importance of context in teaching and learning
ResourcesAssociation for Medical Education in Europe
American Association of Psychiatry
European CME Forum
LinkedIn CME Group
Meducate Global LLC
Connect with Lawrence: Twitter, LinkedIn
See Lawrence's TEDx Talk
Connect with Alex
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, as Joan Didion wrote in The White Album.
We talk a lot about the importance of story on this podcast, and about storytelling as a portal to learning. In today's episode, we get to learn from a storytelling master.
Rick Stone, CEO of StoryWork International, has spent a lifetime crafting stories in many sectors, including healthcare. He is the co-creator of StoryCare, a web-based product to help healthcare organizations improve patient safety and support team-based health professional education. He also created the Living Stories program for Novant Health, which supports patients in telling their life stories in service of improving their health outcomes.
Rick is the co-author of Story Intelligence: Master Story, Master Life. I think you are in for a treat in this episode. Our conversation touched on:
- The role of literature and art in cultivating empathy in medical professionals
- The power of emotional intelligence
- The narrative structure of the brain and how story is a powerful reagent to rewire the brain and help us learn new perspectives and points of view
- The difference between case studies and stories
ResourcesStory Intelligence
The Healing Art of Storytelling
Every Patient Tells a Story
Columbia University Narrative Medicine Program
Howard Gardner at Harvard
Mark Nepo
7000 Ways to Listen
Johnny Moses
Team STEPPS
Ronald Epstein
Paula Underwood
Peter Pappas
Sam Magill
Connect with Rick, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Connect with Alex
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One of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the massive shift from live meetings and education to virtual formats and the longer term implications of this shift is an ongoing conversation in the continuing healthcare education world. The 2020 ACCME Annual Report noted that online activities engaged most learners compared with live courses and regularly scheduled series, the dominant activity types in preceding years.
The shift to online education is itself not new in the US although its expansion has been patchy and there are several factors that pose barriers to the development and implementation of online learning, such as time constraints, poor technical skills, inadequate infrastructure, absence of institutional strategies and support and negative attitudes.
As a result of these barriers, as well as the impact of the evolving science of learning, the demand for instructional designers in continuing healthcare education is increasing. One study predicts that by 2025, there will be a 28% in ID jobs in education.
But what do instructional designers do and what is their role in continuing healthcare education? My guest today Jessica Martello answers those questions. As VP of of content and editorial at EVERFI, a digital education company, Jessica brings deep expertise to the potential of instruction design in adult learning.
Join us to hear more about:
- The key components of an effective digital learning platform
- Key factors to optimize digital learning platforms
- How to assess learning outcomes in digital education
- Challenges that adults experience in relation to online learning
ResourcesEVERFI
On Being with Krista Tippett: Ariel Berger—Be a Blessing
Instructional Design Resources from ACCME
Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME). ACCME Data Report. Rising to the Challenge in Accredited Continuing Education—2020.
Love LM, Anderson MC, Haggar FL. Strategically integrating instructional designers in medical education. Academic Medicine. 2019;94:146.
Snell L, Son D, Onishi H. Instructional Design. Applying Theory to Practice. In Swanwick T, Forrest K, O’Brien BC (eds) Understanding Medical Education: Evidence, Theory, and Practice. Third Edition. 2018. London: Wiley.
Connect with Jessie
Connect with Alex
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
My guest on episode 16 of Write Medicine is Greselda Butler, a health education professional who works at Otsuka. Greselda lives her passion for educating and leading others toward their passion. IN this episode, we talk about mentoring—what is is, its benefits for both mentor and mentee, and how to find and structure mentoring opportunities.
ResourcesGoldfarb Institute
Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions
Healthcare Business Women's Association
The Alliance’s Pilot Mentoring Program launched in October 2020
https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2021/05/what-great-mentorship-looks-like-in-a-hybrid-workplace
Townsend B. Mentoring Virtually: A Timely Benefit for Alliance Members
Johnson-Bailey J, Cervero R. Mentoring in black and white: the intricacies of cross‐cultural mentoring. Sociology. 2007: 7-21
Connect with GreseldaTwitter: @aCMEstory
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/greseldabutler
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
Anne Jacobson MSPharm, CHCP is an independent writer who has been specializing in healthcare professional education since 1999.
We recorded our conversation in May 2021. For Anne and many colleagues in continuing healthcare education, the last 18 months or so has been a time of taking stock and reflection on what we want the next phases of our careers to look like.
We discuss this process of reflection and the path it leads to questions about how we find fulfillment in work and life.
As many guests on Write Medicine have shared, there are so many different stories of how we found our way into medical writing and medical education.
Anne observes that across all these different stories is a consistent theme: most of us didn’t follow a pre-existing passion for medical writing or continuing healthcare education; we discovered it while we were on the road to other things.
But what many people share in this space is what Cal Newport calls a craftsman mindset.
We explore:
✔️ How does a person get good at what they do?
✔️What does craftsmanship look like?
✔️ How do we keep things interesting in our work and create the life we want?
Resources✔️ Continuing Medical Education (CME)
✔️ American Medical Writers Association Conference
✔️ National Association of Science Writers
✔️ Cal Newport Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown
o Deep Work
o So Good
o Digital Minimalism
o Craftsman Mindset
✔️ International Society for Medical Publication Professionals
✔️ National Association for Health Care Quality
✔️ CME Palooza
✔️ UC San Diego Medical Writing Certificate Program
✔️ American Medical Association (AMA) Medical Writing Certificate Program
Connect with Anne: LinkedIn and Twitter
Connect with Alex
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
My guest is Dr. Elizabeth Franklin, Associate Professor in the School of Health Related Professions at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Elizabeth teaches research, communications, and health policy for the doctorate in health administration degree program. Elizabeth shares her considerable knowledge about online learning and interprofessional learning in the state of Mississippi and draws on a deep well of teaching in high school, community college and university settings. She shares strategies to support engagement in online learning and gets into the nitty gritty of software integrations that make online interactions fun.
Resources
School of Health Related Professions
CEA Office
Alliance for continuing education in the health professions
Quality Matters
Alliance Learning Lab
Nearpod
Knowima
HCHAPS Scores
Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Connect with Elizabeth
Connect with Alex
Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
Karen Overstreet EdD, RPh, FACEHP, CHCP, Vice President, Scientific and Educational Affairs for Medical Learning Institute, Inc. is here to talk about her journey into educating health professionals and some of the things she thinks are important to support effective communication in the education field.
These include:
- Skills you need for staying power in CME/CPD
- The science of learning
- Creative ways to measure outcomes
- Formats for delivering education to clinicians
- How to build interactivity into text
- Parsing education materials for specific kinds of clinicians
- The pressing need for wider professional development
Resources
Medical Learning Institute, Inc
Facebook: @mliace
Instagram: @medicallearninginstitute
LinkedIn: @medical-learning-institute-inc
Twitter: @mli_ace
Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards
Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHSOIG) Guidance
Connect with Karen: LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: ThistleEditorial.com
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Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers
Hello and welcome to Write Medicine. I’m your host Alex Howson and I use She/her pronouns. I wanted to jump in and introduce myself to those of you who may be new to the podcast and also share a summary of topics that you might have missed and season season one so that it’s easy peezy to go back and download those episodes for your library.
If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and/or leave a review on your podcast listening platform.
And if you’re interested in receiving alerts about what’s coming up next, as well as a summary of resources and tools that our guests have shared, why not sign up for our biweekly newsletter.
As a gift, you'll receive a summary of top tips and tools from Season 1 to elevate your education content.
As a yoga teacher who loves to share tools like mindful movement, breath awareness, and stillness to help people cultivate rest and resilience in their lives, I’m beyond delighted to share episode 12 of Write Medicine with you.
My guest is Donna Gabriel, the Senior Director of Global Education at Med-IQ. Donna is currently pursuing doctorate in Mindful Leadership in Healthcare and is an advocate for mental health in general and reducing clinician burnout in particular. Donna talks about why so many clinicians are exhausted and discusses the importance of mindfully-designed education that not only supports clinician wellbeing but also boosts learning.
Martin Warters MA Ed. Tech, CHSEis Head of Education Development Management at Pfizer. Today he shares his expertise on how we can leverage simulation technology in clinical learning and continuing healthcare education. He talks about the power of narrative design to buttress the patient's story, and how to creatively craft pathways for effective learning.
ResourcesHigh fidelity simulation
AR/VR
Lev Vygotsky and the zone of proximal development
Narrative Medicine at Columbia
Narrative design
Conceptual frameworks in medical simulation
Simulation in adult learning
https://learninguncut.global/podcast/
Connect with Martin: LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: Thistleeditorial.com
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
Adrienne Stevens, EdD, MBA, Vice President and Head of Scientific Strategy at Healio Strategic Solutions shares how her passion for dance, and her interest in the mechanics of movement, physical therapy, anatomy, and physiology has translated into a career as a medical communicator. Dance requires precision, and that’s what Adrienne practices in her work.
Welcoming Adrienne Stevens, PhD in physiology, to the podcast
[00:02] Some of the things Adrienne learned in the process of writing her dissertation that fuel her approach in healthcare communication.
[00:04] Some of the key differences Adrienne sees between scientific writing and business writing.
[00:09] Key types of communication that work with physicians and other healthcare workers.
[00:13:25] The importance of motivational interviewing.
[0015:29] Differences in the kind of education strategy and format that MSLs respond to compared with clinicians.
[00:18:22] Are we interactive enough in the education we design?
[00:20:36] Communication in obesity education.
ResourcesHealio Strategic Solutions
Performing Health
Motivational interviewing
Connect with Adrienne: LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: Thistleeditorial.com
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
IntroductionAmanda Kaczerski, ATC, MS, CHCP is Vice Principal of Educational Strategy at the Academy for Continued Healthcare Learning. We first met at the beginning of 2020, feels like 100 years ago now, when we both co-presented as faculty in a prep course for the Alliance's CHCP exam. I'm delighted to have her on the show today, we're going to talk about instructional design, and geek out a little bit and some of those instructional design parameters.
Chapters00:04:19 From field sales to learning design
00:06:11 Pay attention to clinician goals
00:11:00 Dealing with online fatigue
00:14:55 Addressing the "shiny objects"
00:19:46 Changes in how people approach education design
00:22:24 Leveraging a range of virtual learning approaches for CME/CPD
00:27:15 Key Take Aways
Connect with Amanda: LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: Thistleeditorial.com
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
IntroductionMonique Johnson MD is the Medical Director at Physicians' Education Resource and has more than 20 years in the CME field. Monique shares some of the challenges clinicians face when they're in the healthcare industry, why she's passionate about having better education within this field, and how to overcome common structural barriers in healthcare that block health professionals from learning.
Chapters
[02:03] A little bit about Monique and how she got started in the medical education field.
[06:37] Monique shares some of the challenges she had on the administration side of things when she was in the medical field.
[11:20] Monique gives an example of how education can address structural healthcare barriers.
[14:54] Some 'common facts' that medical professionals use and reference all the time can actually be outdated or flat out not true.
[18:00] The value of education on social determinants of health.
[21:40] What has changed in 2020 and 2021 on how to best approach training clinicians?
[27:22] How should the CME industry best help their clinicians?
ResourcesWilliams DR, Cooper LA. Reducing racial inequities in health: Using what we already know to take action. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019;16(4):606.
Brewer LC et al. Association of race consciousness with the patient-physician relationship, medication adherence, and blood pressure in urban primary care patients. Am J Hypertens.2013;26(11):14-152.
Connect with Monique: Gotoper.com & LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: Thistleeditorial.com
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
Summary
Steve Powell DHA is the CEO and Founder of Synensys Global and is a recognized leader in performance improvement. He has led programs in the US Navy, commercial airline industry, and the healthcare industry for more than 30 years and is passionate about patient safety, quality control, and patient-centered care improvements.
Steve shares what he learned in safety when he was a Navy Pilot and how these experiences crossover nicely into the medical industry. He also shares his thoughts on what makes a team successful when it comes to patient handoffs, and the 5 key principles to a high-reliability organization.
ResourcesInstitute of Medicine
TeamSTEPPS
Kohn KT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS, eds. To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Washington, DC: Committee on Quality Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine: National Academy Press; 1999.
Nash D, Beliveau ME. Two lessons hospitals can learn from their COVID response. MedPage Today. Dec 7, 2020.
Connect with Steve: Synensysglobal.com + LinkedIn
Connect with Alex: Thistleeditorial.com + LinkedIn
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
Introduction
Today my guest is Nina Taylor, Vice President of Learning and Education at American Society for Radiation Oncology. I first met Nina Taylor in 2018 at an Alliance Quality and Innovation Summit in Park City, Utah. She and Andrew Chacko, who was a guest in episode 2 of Write Medicine, were presenters in a session on designing innovative education programs. Nina talks about her work in continuing education and how she uses active listening, social learning, and a sense of fun to create immersive and accessible education for healthcare clinicians.
Ley Take Aways
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How Nina got started in CME.
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What really goes behind the scenes in building out engaging adult learning materials.
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Nina challenges you to think about your leadership ethos.
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Nina shares what her experience was like working in several different medical societies and some of the key takeaways she’s learned over the years.
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When you’re in an association or a society, you’re seen as a peer and medical faculty are happy to help you because everyone is fighting for the same team.
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How does the American Society for Radiation Oncology approach clinician education?
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Nina shares some of the challenges she faced trying to incorporate virtual technology into her department.
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What does a dynamic and immersive educational experience look like? Nina shares some examples.
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Covid is hard for everyone right now. Humans are social creatures and we need connection.
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Nina believes every meeting should have a virtual component. It just opens the doors to so many people who weren’t able to come before due to financial or geographical restraints.
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Virtual is here to stay! Education in any form is always a positive.
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What should practitioners be thinking about when it comes to the future of the CME field?
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We really have to practice what we preach. Sometimes our learning materials are so dry and dull!
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What is the Psychiatric Innovation Lab all about?
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What’s Nina looking forward to in 2021?
SummaryNina's experience at an HBCU gave her direct exposure to a dynamic learning environment filled with opportunities to teach and facilitate that she has been able to pull into her professional life and use to support her work with faculty. And her leadership style of leading from the middle is invested in uplifting team members, elevating their skills, and fostering an ecosystem of sharing information and a climate in which team members take ownership of their own work, and not the work that someone else has determined for them.
The parallel here for me is adult learning. How many programs in CME/CPD really allow learners to take ownership of their own learning? And to what extent does the shift to a virtual learning open a door to that kind of experience? Nina is clear that it is possible to craft dynamic, immersive, experiences that offer room for learners to curate their own learning in a virtual environment that has a clear esthetic design, rapid interactive activities, and networking opportunities. She's also clear that in order for the continuing education field to evolve and strengthen its programming there needs to be more diversity among team members; opportunities for those team members in an education organization to bring their ideas to the table; and a mechanism for listening to and considering those ideas.
Resources
https://www.astro.org/Astro.org
Connect with Nina: LinkedIn
Podcast TeamHost: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
Regina Sih-Meynier is an authentic leader with expertise in developing and executing strategic plans for Medical Affairs. She is passionate about ensuring patients receive the best available healthcare and she leverages her intuitive sense, her ability to identify problems, and her creativity to create systems and processes to solve those problems. She has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare field and understands the importance of demonstrating impact in patient care.
Regina talks with Alex about how to create education content that supports authentic empowerment and transformational learning.
Key Takeaways
[0:55] How did Regina get involved in medical education? Like so many of us in this field, her career path wasn’t exactly linear.
[4:20] What is authentic empowerment?
[6:25] Regina loves to use her intuitive sense to guide her in writing highly educational and engaging patient materials.
[7:25] Tapping into your intuition is something corporate likes to stay away from because you can’t exactly see it or touch it. However, you’re missing out on a whole superpower if you ignore it.
[9:35] How can you tap into your intuition and really listen to your inner voice?
[13:30] There’s a real art to developing care that is both science-based and gut-based.
[14:15] Why does corporate like to avoid people’s intuition?
[18:35] Glennon Doyle’s inner voice. Ideas and solutions have their own energy. Regina explains what she means by this.
[22:00] Regina shares what she’s learned from working with a life coach and how it’s given her a new way to approach and solve problems.
[25:00] What is Regina’s company, Oh Universe, about?
[29:25] What are some of the benefits of taking on a more authentic empowerment stance in the medical education space?
[32:40] Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real! We don’t always have all the answers.
[34:25] Regina shares her morning rituals.
ResourcesConnect with Regina: www.oh-universe.com, LinkedIn, Facebook
Doyle G. Untamed. The Dial Press. 2020.
Gilbert E. Big Magic. CreativeLiving Beyond Fear. Riverhead Books. 2016. Gladwell M. The Tipping Point. Bay Back Books, 2002.
Sih-Meynier R. An opportunity for organizational leaders and decision-makers to step in and protect the well-being of their people. Thrive Global. October 4, 2020.
Thaler RH, Sunstein CR. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin Books. 2009.
The earliest documented microscope was ~1590. https://www.livescience.com/39649-who-invented-the-microscope.html
Thistleeditorial.com
Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify
Scott Kober MBA is the Managing Partner of Excalibur Medical Education, which launched in January 2021. He has more than two decades of experience designing and developing content for CME activities and provides high-quality innovative education for today's healthcare providers. In this episode, Scott underscores the different aspects writers need to think about when developing medical content, especially if they do not have a medical or science background. Scott also shares some of his tried and true tips on how to create engaging medical pieces that are simple and easy to understand.
Key Takeaways
- A little bit about Scott and how he got involved in this field.
- How has medical education evolved since the early 2000s?
- Scott defines what adult learning looks like in healthcare and how it slightly differs in other industries.
- What are some industry best practices out there where we can drive home the core message of ‘what does this all mean’?
- Writers love to show people how smart they are and reference as many medical guides as possible, but that’s not helpful!
- How can writers get better at creating more relevant content for their audience, especially if they don’t have a science or medical background?
- Scott shares some advice on how to develop a case study that’s helpful to your readers.
- How much style or personality can you have when writing these very educational and often serious materials?
- Scott’s content development process.
- Don’t get intimidated by the different content platforms out there. Everyone starts somewhere.
- People underestimate how challenging medical content is, so it’s important to educate your higher ups on what actually goes into creating these pieces.
ResourcesThistleeditorial.com
CMEpalooza
Connect with Scott: Excalibur Medical Education & LinkedIn
Get access to Write Medicine podcast updates—and more—with Thistle Insights.
Quotes
“What does it all mean? This can be challenging because we are not health care professionals, we’re not the ones seeing these patients. So we have to take our best guess and work with our faculty.”
“Make your materials interesting. No one wants to sit through the monotony of study and data. You got to figure out a way to translate the information in a way that’s going to resonate with people.”
“If you can be entertaining and still get your message across, that’s going to be the perfect way to do it. However, it doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people.”
Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify
Dr. Genevieve Long is a medical writer and editor specializing in patient education, plain language, health literacy and marketing communications. She began her medical writing career as a manuscript editor at Oregon Health & Science University and has more than 25 years of healthcare experience. Dr. Genevieve has been active in the American Medical Writers Association since 2002 and is the past president of AMWA-Northwest. She also teaches at the University of Chicago Graham School on the subjects of medical writing and editing.
In this week’s episode, Dr. Long shares:
- How she got into this specialized field
- Better ways to practice patient empathy, and
- What healthcare professionals need to focus on first when it comes to creating educational content.
Key Takeaways
[3:38] A little bit about Dr. Genevieve and how she got into the field of patient education.
[9:02] Dr. Genevieve shares what people need to be thinking about when they begin to write patient education materials.
You might not realize it, but you have a lot of power and what you do/say can hurt the patient.
For many health care professionals, the world of medicine is a comfortable place. For patients and their loved ones, it is not. It’s a traumatic experience for them.
[13:16] When it comes to creating content, you want to focus on the most important content first. People have short attention spans!
Get clear on what’s a ‘need to know’ vs. a ‘nice to know’.
Should all of your words be short? Dr. Genevieve says no, but spacing plays a big role in readability.
When it comes to adult learning, the more you’re engaged and interacting with the content, the better of an understanding you’ll get. Dr. Genevieve tries to incorporate this principal into her classes.
[19:19] Patients who are engaged with their own healthcare journey tend to do better in their recovery.
When faculty talks about ‘empowerment’, what do they really mean when it comes to patient education?
[22:31] How are educators and providers thinking about information sharing and content creation in today’s landscape?
[25:09] Dr. Genevieve shares the different types of materials she’s worked on over the years to make content more digestible. Informational videos are doing exceedingly well.
[30:00] What resources are out there that content creators can leverage when creating simple and easy to understand patient education materials?
[33:45] Dr. Genevieve shares her tips on building a more empathic approach to her writing.
Spend time with patients! Your materials will immensely improve.
[37:25] The more people we can bring into science, the less fear people might have on certain medical procedures.
[40:00] What don’t we do enough of in patient education? Dr. Genevieve shares her thoughts on usability testing.
Resources
Thistleeditorial.com
Connect with Dr. Genevieve: Bridgehealthcomm.com
Stacks.cdc.gov/Simply+put
Healthliteracy.com
Health Literacy Experts: Rima Rudd/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Multiregional Clinical Trial Center
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Anna Codina
My conversation today is with Dr. Andrew Chacko, a psychiatrist and leader in healthcare innovation. Andrew uses his medical experience to teach others how to become design thinkers using cognitive, strategic and practical processes by which design concepts (proposals for new products, buildings, machines, etc.) are developed. He is passionate about transforming healthcare into the vital, rewarding, and life-changing practice that it can be for patient, provider, and support professionals alike.
Show Notes/Highlights
[04:43] - Design thinking applied to problems in healthcare.
[09:37] - Design thinking and problems caused for healthcare by COVID-19.
[14:16] - How does design thinking get systems (and leaders within) to start thinking about the people who support those systems?
[19:10] - The synergy between design thinking and other ongoing healthcare initiatives e.g., CME/CPD.
[31:18] - The application of design thinking to clinician education.
Where to connect with Andrew
WEBSITE: https://www.drchacko.com/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/chacko_md/?hl=en
Here’s the Medium story Andrew mentioned.
Articles on Design Thinking in Medical Education
Sandars J, Goh P-S. Design Thinking in Medical Education: The Key Features and Practical Application. J Med Ed Curr Devel. 2020. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2382120520926518
Gottlieb M, Wagner E, Wagner A, et al. Applying Design Thinking Principles to Curricular Development in Medical Education. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/aet2.10003
McLaughlin J, Wolcott MD, Hubbard D, et al. A qualitative review of the design thinking framework in health professions education. BMC Medical Education. 2019;19(98): https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1528-8
Audrie Tornow is Managing Partner at Excalibur Medical Education. We talked about the role of creativity, intentionality, and failure in designing education content for clinicians in healthcare.
01:27 Introductions with Audrie Tornow
02:31 Audrie talks about her beginnings and journey into medical education: No one majored in CME…
04:34 Does anyone remember transparencies?
05:50 How has your background in English informed the way you approach education design and delivery?
“When we plan education, it has become something where everything has a purpose because cost is affiliated with it. Planning it out and knowing what we want, starting with the end in mind, has become more critical than ever.”
07:23 How do you personally define good learning for adults, especially for those working in healthcare?
09:23 What’s your sense of what learners are looking for in their education during the COVID-19 pandemic?
“We talk about online fatigue, but right now so many providers and partners out there are seeing larger metrics than ever in online activities. And so, we’re showing we’re versatile. We’re showing we can adapt.”
14:11 What are some of the shifts you’ve seen in the last few months that really try to creatively engage with a) where learners are and the challenges they may be facing in their personal lives and b) getting around that virtual approach?
18:06 How was the ability of educators within the CME world changed in order to prepare them to work more fluidly and intimately with partners?
21:53 How effective do you think our field is in openly discussing failure?
“I think people think that demonstrating failure means you aren’t a trusted partner. That you aren’t a successful business. And that’s definitely a perception that’s valid, but I think there’s so much to be learned by saying ‘I tried this, here was the idea. And it didn’t work.’ And it might be that next partner that says, ‘Actually if you had just done this.’ They might be the missing piece.”
24:02 You talked about the potential reemergence of print as something that might be increasingly appealing to learners. Can you talk a little bit about that?
ResourcesEric Weiner. The Geography of Bliss. Twelve. 2009.
Transparencies
Results of the Alliance 2016 Environmental Scan. Almanac.
Ben and Jerry Flavor Graveyard
Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. ACCME Data Report 2019.
A podcast designed to explore the minds and practices of people who create content that connects with and educates healthcare professionals.