In this episode, I spoke with Sean Sodha, founder of medical content platform Grafi AI, about the promise and pitfalls of generative AI for healthcare content creators. Sean shared his unique perspective on navigating this emerging technology.  We take a comprehensive look at the role of generative AI in medical content creation and explore its promise for augmenting human skills and improving productivity in the medical writing space.

Key Takeaways

Steps for Educators

Connect with Sean
Grafi.ai
LinkedIn

Resources
BioGPT: a useful tool or cause for concern? The Publication Plan. July 2023. 

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Alliance Almanac

In today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Michelle Rizzo, a trained journalist who turned her curiosity and life-long interest in medicine into a thriving career as a CME writer. Michelle currently works as an associate medical director and senior writer at a boutique CME content company, where she often finds herself writing and researching about rare diseases. She was kind enough to give us a glimpse into her writing process and share some actionable tips for getting into the field without a clinical background. 

Here are three key takeaways from the episode.

This episode has nuggets of wisdom for everyone, whether you’re only thinking about getting into CME or have been in the industry for decades. Share your thoughts and CME career stories in the comments below!

Connect with Michelle
Associate Medical Director, Integrity Continuing Education
[email protected]
LinkedIn

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If you are at all interested in the status of women in medicine and the role of education in addressing gender inequities in the health professions, then you’re going to love today’s episode. I’m speaking with Rebecca Ortega about improving gender equity in cardiology. Rebecca is the Founding and executive director of Women as One, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting talent in medicine by offering professional opportunities to women cardiologists through several different programs. 

1. Rapid Evolution in Cardiology: Rebecca discusses her experience at SCAI, where she was in charge of education. 

2. The Art of Grant Writing: Needs assessment in grant writing. Get clear on why a program is necessary and how it will solve a problem. 

3. Challenges in Procedural Training: It might be straightforward to offer training for new procedures but gender equity is a more complex challenge that requires a different educational approach.

4. Women as One Initiative: This organization promotes gender equity in cardiology through various programs like CLIMB, Escalator Awards, and a talent directory to help diversify clinical trial leadership.

5. Future of Gender Equity in Cardiology: Focus on improving the quality of experience for women in the field rather than just numerical representation.

Resources
🌐 Women as One
YouTube channel
AAMC Gender Inequity Initiative

Connect with Rebecca
LinkedIn

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I’m really excited to have today’s conversation with  Dr. Barbie Honeycutt, a faculty development consultant and host of the podcast Lecture Breakers.  Barbi is an expert in the field of active learning and is known for her work on creating engaging and effective learning experiences for students. She is the founder of FLIP It® and Interactive Lectures, two popular strategies for incorporating active learning in the classroom.

Here’s what you’ll learn in today’s episode. 

1. Start with the learner's experience and where they are in their learning journey. Note their preferences for engaging with learning materials.

2. There’s a continuum of active learning strategies to engage learners from low to high intensity, from think-pair-share at one end of the continuum to project-based assignments at the other. 

3. As we know in CME/CE, it’s vital to align activities to learning outcomes. For example: If critical thinking is a key outcome, use case studies.

4. Consider developing your content via inclusive course design principles that use Universal Design for Learning, draw on a diversity of voices, and offer learners choices about which content is most relevant and how to access that content. 

5. Finally, mobile and microlearning are expanding in CME/CE. These are terrific tools for creating bite-sized content for busy professionals to learn as needed. An example might be 2-minute lessons that health professionals can complete on their phones and apply right away.

Resources
➡️ Bucklin B et al. Making it stick: use of active learning strategies in continuing medical education. BMC Medical Education. 2021, 21(44).
➡️ Universal Design for Learning guidelines
➡️ Six Thinking Hats from the de Bono group
➡️ Quick tips to break up lectures

Connect with Barbi
Barbi's website: barbihoneycutt.com
The Lecture Breakers podcast
LinkedIn 

Connect with Alex
LinkedIn
Website

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Instructional design for online courses is a crucial aspect of modern CME/CE. And as online learning has grown over the last 15 years or so, especially so since 2020, instructional designers play a vital role in creating effective and engaging CME/CE content for learners.

In today’s podcast episode, I’m speaking with Mark Hagerty, an expert in effective instructional design in the context of CME/CE with a passion for behavioral and life sciences. 🩺💡

Mark shares insights from his three-decade-long career in education and his background in psychology, biology, and organizational behavior.

Key highlights include:

Mark's advice for anyone looking to improve their instructional design skills? Learn the ADDIE framework, get familiar with key software tools, play around with new ideas, and above all, have fun!

Whether you're a seasoned medical writer or just starting out, Mark's insights around empathy-driven content and immersive learning experiences are indispensable. Implementing strong instructional design principles can elevate any CME or medical writing to better educate and empower healthcare professionals.

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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 overview of John Dewey’s education philosophy
➡️ Background to Jack Mesirow’s work on transformational learning
➡️ Background to David Kolb’s work on experiential learning

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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.

Resources
Green Pen Solutions
Green Pen Solutions YouTube Channel
MedComms networking
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.

Training and Mentorship
➡️ Sarah is hosting a brand new medical writing course with coaching. Now you can elevate your medical writing career with Sarah's industry-leading expertise through the exclusive Agency Ready program. Courses include comprehensive training and coaching packages, all designed to get you ready to launch the next phase of your medical writing career.

➡️  Take advantage of a special offer in September, saving you over £300 on the cost of enrolment on the Foundations of Excellence training course plus one of only 8 spots in the last Agency Ready coaching group of 2023.

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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 [email protected] 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. 

Resources
Read 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

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Mentioned in this episode:

Alliance Almanac