Write Medicine

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.

Resources
Fenway Institute
National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center
Promoting Equi

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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:

Resources
Septris

Connect with Jayzona
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn

Connect with Alex
www.alexhowson.com
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn

Podcast Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD, CHCP
Shownotes: Emma Kolakowski
Sound: SuZen Marie

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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.

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

Connect with Eve
e: [email protected]
LinkedIn

Connect with Alex
e: [email protected]
LinkedIn
Website

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 

Connect with Brian
ArcheMedX
Twitter
LinkedIn
email: [email protected]

Connect with Alex
Twitter
LinkedIn
email: [email protected]  

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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.

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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Sponsor

Write Medicine is brought to you today by Breathing Space. When you're glued to a keyboard, your body pushes back with headaches, wrist, arm or back pain, or fatigue. Sound familiar? 

Breathing Space offers consistent, short, and simple breath awareness, movement, and myofascial release techniques you can practice at or away from your desk t

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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.

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:

Resources
Accreditation 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

Connect
Brenda: Twitter, Secondary Twitter, LinkedIn, Secondary LinkedIn
Alex: Twitter, LinkedIn, website

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Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie

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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.

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 Recommendations
The Overstory
The Language of Kindness

Resources
American 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

📍Grab the WriteCME Roadmap
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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.

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:

Resources

Association 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 Team

Host: Alexandra Howson PhD

Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie

Shownotes: Linzy Carothers

Support the show

📍Grab the WriteCME Roadmap

⭐ Review the podcast

🗞️ Biweekly Newsletter with tips and resources to enrich your CME content niche

➡️ Join WriteCME Pro for ongoing professional development

🌐 Podcast website

🎙️ Share the podcast

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.

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:

Resources

Story 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

Subscribe to the Write Medicine newsletter for bonus material. 

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Support the show

📍Grab the WriteCME Roadmap

⭐ Review the podcast

🗞️ Biweekly Newsletter with tips and resources to enrich your CME content niche

➡️ Join WriteCME Pro for ongoing professional development

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🎙️ Share the podcast

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.

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:

Resources
EVERFI
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 Team
Host: Alexandra Howson PhD
Sound Engineer: Suzen Marie
Shownotes: Linzy Carothers

📍Grab the WriteCME Roadmap
⭐ Review the podcast
🗞️ Biweekly Newsletter with tips and resources to enrich your CME content niche
➡️ Join WriteCME Pro for ongoing professional development
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🎙️ Share the podcast

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.