Designing CME content for busy healthcare professionals comes with unique challenges. If content is King, learning culture must be Queen, as the latter goes a long way to determining learner outcomes. A culture of curiosity and continuous learning encourages medical professionals to ask questions, use storytelling to connect people with the content they are learning, and offer feedback to others. Thus, medical writers who manage to create CME content that fosters this learning culture can create better outcomes for their audience.

Frustrated with many years of check-box, top-down, broadcast learning culture, CEO Andrew Barry founded Curious Lion and built a better way to effect behavior change by fostering progressive and transformative cultures of curiosity and continuous learning. Andrew emphasizes shared vision, peer-to-peer learning, opportunities for personal mastery, and systems thinking as key building blocks to support a curious and continuous learning culture. These building blocks are as relevant to health professionals and healthcare settings as they are to corporate organizations.

To that end, let’s explore strategies CME writers can use to engage and captivate learners.

This article is based on my conversation with Andrew on the Write Medicine podcast. Listen to the full conversation here.

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Using a Shared Vision to Build a Culture of Learning

Shared vision is a key element in creating a culture of learning and involves having a North Star that everyone in the organization is working towards. It's not enough to have a vision that is created by the marketing team or the top brass; shared vision has to be something that everyone is invested in and feels ownership of. Based on Peter Senge's work The Fifth Discipline, shared vision means that everyone on the team or in the organization must be aligned around a common purpose and needs to understand how their individual contributions fit into that larger vision.

The idea of a shared vision is important in healthcare too. Health systems are learning systems in which everyone is constantly learning and adapting to new challenges. CME writers need to understand this shared vision and incorporate it into every stage of their content creation process. In other words, medical writers need to understand what the organization hiring them is trying to achieve and commit to working together to achieve it.

We talked about the importance of developing a shared vision (or shared mental model) for patient safety in a previous episode of the Write Medicine podcast.

But a shared vision is just the beginning. Other building blocks need to be in place like peer-to-peer learning, experimentation, and a willingness to take risks and make mistakes. It's also important to create an environment where people feel safe to ask questions and challenge assumptions.

Check out how curiosity grounded this interprofessional workshop intervention in critical care.

Peer-to-Peer Collaboration, Personal Mastery, and Systems Thinking

Peer-to-peer learning involves creating opportunities for team members to learn from each other through collaboration and social learning and is increasingly part of an expanded toolbox for delivering continuing education to health professionals. Content is king in learning culture, but it's important to recognize that different people consume content very differently, which means providing different ways to access CME content is key. Content consumption is what Barry calls both a skill and a curse, especially for the Millennials that represent almost 90% of the workforce. While this demographic is skilled at finding information quickly, the abundance of that information can also be overwhelming.

So it's important to develop CME content in various formats and delivery modalities so that you can support as many different types of learning journeys as possible. Medical writers need to work as guides, leading learners toward credible sources and providing curated content to help them focus on what matters most. For example, The Curious Lion team curates the best pieces of podcast, article, book, or TED talk content and provides a summary and analysis of the content to help learners understand the key takeaways and apply them to their work. CME content writers may choose to do the same when curating additional resources or summarizing lessons.

Systems thinking involves looking at how everything fits together (e.g., providers, patients, administrators), and how feedback is created within the system. For example, if a nurse moves something in one area of a hospital, what impact does it have elsewhere? This is an important piece of the culture of learning puzzle, and understanding how systems work helps CME writers create optimal conditions for learning.

Need a guide on systems thinking? Check out AMA's Health Systems Science.

Steps to Build a Learning Culture at Your Organization Through CME Content

1. The Self-Determination Process

Andrew believes self-determination lies at the heart of behavior change which he sees as identity change. Learners must start with a clear picture of their current reality, be dissatisfied with it, have a vision of what success or a better future could look like, and a clear pathway to get there. Self-determination is the core of the behavior change process and so he invests heavily in building motivation through the tenets of self-determination theory, which emphasizes competence, relatedness, and autonomy. For healthcare professionals, self-determination may come in the form of taking self-assessments and establishing learning objectives before beginning a course.

2. Creating Outcomes

In addition, creating learning cultures involves interventions at both the micro and macro levels, focusing on both the individual and organizational culture. Macro assessments help to map the culture of learning and gauge the conditions for learning — much like a comprehensive, contextualized needs assessment. CME writers can use that information to target areas that need improvement, such as creating a learning environment where people feel safe to ask questions and challenge assumptions.

Once areas of improvement have been identified, organizations can start a conversation about what they're trying to achieve in terms of outcomes metrics. When the desired metrics have been established, the next step is to show how the relevant team and the people within it can impact those metrics through a list of actions. Exactly like the gap–learning objectives–outcomes process in education for health professionals.

3. Tracking Progress

The next step is to build out an ideal version of the healthcare professional who embodies the skills and competencies needed to achieve the desired actions (an archetype). A shared vision that includes a spectrum of relevant skills and competencies is important here to show learners a visual picture of what “good” looks like. Then, learners can use customized self-assessment tools to assess their own learning needs and develop personalized learning paths.

Write Medicine recommends and uses My Snapshot as a customized self-assessment tool to help CME writers assess their own learning needs and develop personalized learning paths.

Reflective Learning and Identity Change

Andrew emphasizes the importance of developing lifelong, agile, reflective learners in organizational settings. Reflection is crucial because learners must not only consume information but also reflect on their experiences so they can apply what they've learned. As we know in the world of CME content, by reflecting on what they have learned and what they can do better next time, health professionals can continuously improve their skills and knowledge.

It’s important for CME writers to also see themselves as coaches, so they can help learners identify their strengths and weaknesses, as well as develop strategies for improvement. And when learners share and teach what they have learned, they deepen their own understanding and consolidate their knowledge.

Andrew argues that knowledge accrues through a circle of learning that involves sharing ideas and reflection.

Cultivating Curiosity, Continuous Improvement, and Employee Engagement with CME Content

Ultimately, creating a culture of learning is about creating a culture of curiosity and continuous improvement. It's about encouraging people to ask questions, explore new ideas, and challenge the status quo in a circle of learning. Organizations and CME content creators can support learning and behavior change by creating a culture of learning and continuous improvement that provides opportunities for learning and development, encourages experimentation and risk-taking, and fosters a supportive and collaborative environment. These characteristics are as relevant for health professionals and healthcare teams as for the corporate workforce.

Create a Learning Culture with Your CME Content

If you’re an aspiring CME medical writer, WriteCME Pro is here to help you on your journey. Enjoy one-on-one mentorship, peer support, and personalized guidance on the technical and practical aspects of CME writing from someone who’s made the career transition herself. Learn more about how WriteCME Pro can help your medical writing journey today.

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