Friday, October 18, 2013

Strategies to Build Education Content for Health Professionals

Given that the past decade has witnessed a rapid expansion of biomedical knowledge, you’d think the case for continuing medical education (CME)/continuing education in the health professions (CEHP) is made. If you’re a health professional, there’s always something new to learn. However, according to several reports (notably Redesigning Continuing Education in the Health Professions), learning something new isn’t enough anymore.

Today, health professionals need to not only accumulate facts (characteristic of the old CME paradigm) but also integrate new knowledge into practice and develop analytic and diagnostic thinking skills that support performance and quality improvement. These changes are needed to meet the demands of a complex, team-based, patient-centered health care system that is evolving to address persistent health disparities and deficits in patient safety and health care quality. As a result, CEHP needs to be up to the task of delivering what education leaders call performance-based, transformative, interprofessional learning.

The good news is that CEHP continues to be an important area of content development for an expanding range of learning platforms (e.g., point of care, online, simulations). The bad news is…actually, if you’re a writer, there is no bad news, because, as Johanna Lackner Marx notes in her CME Rising column in the AMWA Journal, where there is content, there is a need for writers, especially writers skilled in developing interactive content that addresses the kinds of real-world clinical, organizational, and system challenges faced by health professionals in their daily practice.

If you create education content for health professionals, your own education can get a bolus shot at the 2013 American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The AMWA annual conference is well-recognized for the value of its educational offerings; a recent survey demonstrated that the conference is the primary source of continuing education for 76% of AMWA members.

At least a dozen annual conference sessions focus specifically on creating content for practitioner education, in print, online, and multimedia formats.

Audience Analysis
If you want to refine your audience analysis skills, and align audience needs with the medium you are writing for, consider “Target Audience: Preventing Tragedies on a Train.” This hands-on session will prepare you to identify target audiences—arguably the single most important skill in medical writing, especially when writing for members of interdisciplinary health care teams—and tailor your content accordingly.

Medium Matters
Of course, in writing, medium matters as much as audience. If you write education content specifically for online/multimedia formats, consider “Medical Writing for Instructionally Sound Engaging e-Learning” or “Evidence-Based Instructional Design: Practical Tips for the Occasional Educator.” Online/multimedia education is a growing segment in CEHP, as online learning offers ease of access and convenience to busy, time-strapped health professionals. If you are a new, or moderately experienced, writer who is new to e-learning, this session will introduce you to the works of leading educational researchers and help you expand your ability to write instructionally sound content for e-learning educational and training courses—without having to become a software expert.

And if that’s not enough for you, “Writing for Video” will get you simultaneously using the left and right sides of your brain. Writing for video/CD-ROM requires more than words, calling for both verbal and visual communication to hold viewers’ attention. Stuck on how to achieve both? This session with show you how to create effective presentations through conceptual development, scriptwriting style, production commands, and the interactive features of CD-ROMs.

The Case Rests
In fact, interaction is increasingly the name of the education game. Case-based learning is the new normal in adult education in general, and in CEHP in particular. Although Harvard Business School is often credited with inventing the case method, Steve Sturdy, my old colleague at the University of Edinburgh, argues that University of Edinburgh pathology professor James Lorrain Smith actually invented the ‘case method of teaching pathology’ in 1912. You can explore case development at the AMWA Annual Conference in “Stating Your Case (Study).” In this seminar, you’ll learn the nuts and bolts of creating robust case studies. Eve Wilson, one of the presenters in that session, says that developing questions to incorporate within case studies that challenge clinician learners and allow educators to assess learning is key to case creation. The seminar will provide an overview of the steps in developing appropriate knowledge- and competence-based questions within case studies to enhance learner interaction.

If you want to dig deeper, “Learning in the Health Professions: Practical Strategies for Developing Continuing Education Cases” is a foundational workshop that offers even more hands-on practice in case development, including how to optimize adult learning principles to enhance learning. A client recently commented to me that it’s hard to get writers who can handle cases and develop an activity that incorporates a case, multiple choice questions, and evidence-based feedback. After these sessions, you’ll be able to do all three.

Need to Know
For a review of the current regulatory environment in CEHP (and who doesn’t need this review?), there is “Where Does the Sun Shine? The Regulatory Environment, Education, and Promotions.” Led by continuing education experts Marissa Seligman, PharmD, FACEHP, CCMEP, and Pamela Ostreicher, PhD, this seminar also focuses on changes in states laws, trends in institutional regulations, and do’s and don’ts for medical writers who provide services for both CME and non-CME projects.

Publish
If you want to publish about your development of continuing education projects, you can hear what Dr. Seligman, who is the Editor of the ACHEP Almanac, looks for in manuscripts at “Getting Published: A Discussion with Editors of Medical Communication Publications.” This panel discussion is led by Vicki White, editor of the AMWA Journal, who will also discuss how to get your manuscript noted for our organization’s peer-reviewed journal.

Register
Register now for the AMWA Annual Conference to enhance your skills in developing educational content. You can find the days and times for sessions in the registration brochure. Act fast—early registration ends today, Friday, October 18. You can register on-site at the conference, but you’ll pay a higher registration fee. Save money and register now!
--Alexandra Howson, PhD, 2013 Annual Conference Committee

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