Content Craft Episodes

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 ne...

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 p...

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. 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 ...

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 cor...

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, mea...

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 ...

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’...

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...

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 educ...

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 Resources Riggs B. Tell Them a Story. Using narrative nonfiction in your everyday writing. NY: Editorial Freelancers Association. WordRake: Writing Professionals on LinkedIn ...

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 clinicia...

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)...

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-a...

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 podca...

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 curren...

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-...

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 educ...

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-...

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 relationship...

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...

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 in...

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 educat...

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 styl...

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 supp...