Write Medicine

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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Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

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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Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

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:

Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

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: [email protected]

Acronyms
Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology
National Comprehensive Cancer Network
Board Certified Oncology Pharmacists

Education Vendors
Medscape
OncLive
Pharmacy Times

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Mentioned in this episode:

12 Days of Giving

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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Mentioned in this episode:

Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

"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: [email protected]
Association of Community Cancer Centers
LinkedIn

Resources
Barret 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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Mentioned in this episode:

Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

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 how self-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: [email protected]
LinkedIn

Resources
The Lancet Group’s commitments to gender equity and diversity
Ten steps to gender equity: The BMJ’s resolutions
Unconscious Bias Drives Your Decision-Making. Here's How to Take Control

Produced by Golden Goose Creative

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Mentioned in this episode:

Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

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: [email protected]
LinkedIn
Medality

Resources
American Association for Women in Radiology

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Mentioned in this episode:

Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.

✨ 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: [email protected]
LinkedIn

Resources
Total Enablement Scorecard
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Learning Health Systems
Peter 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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Mentioned in this episode:

Fall Back to School Sale

We're running a back-to-school sale September 2 through 12. Standalone CME writing toolkits, business kits, and quarterly WriteCME Pro membership — all at the best pricing we've offered this year. Everything's at www.alexhowson.com. Link's in the show notes.