How to Create Engaging Medical Writing as a CME Medical Writer
CME/CE content is made for health professionals — people with incredibly full schedules, busy minds and lives, who often require a significant amount of buy-in to sit down and watch an educational video or attend a lecture. That means medical writers everywhere have the challenging job of engaging a somewhat distracted audience.
CME/CE writers can keep their audiences in a receptive mode by creating experiential learning experiences in which participants take an active part in their education.
Learning by Doing in Medical Communication
The idea of learning by doing was first popularized by John Dewey, an American philosopher and educational reformer. In his 1938 book, Experience and Education, Dewey argued that true mastery can only take place when the participants feel invested in their educational journey. This sense of investment can only come through interactive experience, such as engaging in medical education programs or workshops offered by the American Medical Writers Association.
Dewey believed adults learn better when they draw on lived experiences to evaluate new concepts — a principle he called the continuity of experience. As such, for adults (health professionals in the CME/CE context), every new learning experience requires taking something they already know and modifying it in some way to affect the quality of their future experiences.
That means that as medical writers, we need to proactively work on designing content that lets healthcare professionals test new ideas presented to them in CME/CE using context they already know (Dewey called this process the principle of interaction). The implication for writers here is that we need to adjust our focus on education as the end goal to viewing education as a continuous process.
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Examples of Medical Writing: Applications for Experiential Learning in CME/CE
Theories are not always easy to apply in practice, especially in a learning environment. Fortunately, Malcolm Knowles took Dewey’s ideas in centering experience as part of adult learning and distilled them into five distinct characteristics that remain relevant for patient-facing professionals in medical and pharmaceutical fields. According to Knowles, effective teaching materials for adults should be:
Learner-centric: focused on the needs of the audience, not on the desires of the educator
Problem-oriented: Each piece of learning content should aim to resolve a specific issue the audience is struggling with in real life
Relevant to practice: The experiential part of the course should make sense in the context of the learner’s current experience
Based on educational need: Gaps in learning should be identified before learning begins, so the content provided can address specific needs directly
Aligned with anticipated outcomes: Learners should focus on the knowledge and experiences directly tied to solving their problems to get the anticipated outcome
For medical writers who specialize in CME/CE content creation, that translates to following these best practices:
Do a deep dive on your audience: Who are they? What are their day-to-day realities? What are their needs? What experiences or background do they bring to the CME/CE activity? Medical writers with clinical experience may be at an advantage here since you, at some point, were the audience!
Read the needs assessment carefully: Before diving into content creation, spend some time familiarizing yourself with the knowledge/skill needs and the clinical practice/performance gaps presented in the needs assessment. These gaps can serve as guides in creating learning experiences for your content.
Review the anticipated outcomes: Identify the problem that the content needs to address, ensuring it incorporates relevant medical terminology. What specific skills do the learners need to know or be able to do at the end of the experience? Design your activities to directly correlate with the anticipated outcomes.
Set SMARTER goals for your CME/CE content: Keep the content Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Relevant to the learner, learning objectives, and anticipated outcomes, Time-specific, Evaluable, Realistic, and aligned with continuing medical education (CME) standards.
Learn More About How to Become a Medical Writer with WriteCME Pro
As important as outcomes analysis is to the field of CME/CE, it’s only one aspect of specialized CME/CE medical writing. As a medical writer, you may be tasked with other writing, such as needs assessments, activity content, patient cases, assessment test questions, and more. Each area requires specific skills to master, and you can hone those skills with WriteCME Pro, specifically tailored for freelance professionals in medical education.
WriteCME Pro is designed for CME writers by a CME writer who transitioned from academia and clinical care to building a sustainable CME writing business. Discover how WriteCME Pro can help your medical writing journey. Unsure? Schedule a time to talk with Alex, our founder, about what’s next for your career.
Combining all of these tips should help you write CME/CE content that directly aligns with your audience and gives them plenty of opportunities for interactive experiences. If you want to sharpen your CME/CE writing skills, including writing needs assessments, these resources can help:
→ Join WriteCME Pro, a CME-specific, skills-based membership for CME writers who are ready to create CME content with confidence.
→ Listen to the Write Medicine podcast or watch our YouTube channel for weekly best practices in creating content that connects with and educates health professionals.
→ Subscribe to the Write Medicine newsletter for tips, tools, and tactics to help you create CME/CE content with confidence