CME/CE (continuing medical education/continuing education) content can be easily dismissed as dry. Some would argue that this is the way it ought to be. After all, writing about disease states or safety protocols for health professionals is not exactly a lighthearted task. Much is on the line if the learner doesn’t absorb the subject matter — including the safety and well-being of patients and the practitioner. 

But as medical writers, we should not mistake levity for empathy. In fact, by creating CME/CE content that acknowledges the human experiences of patients and health professionals, we may help learners retain core concepts. Time and again, research shows that people learn best from stories, which means that designing education activities that recognize the human aspects of a clinical setting can be a resource to improve learner outcomes.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to do just that by writing CME/CE content that’s empathetic and approachable for our healthcare providers. 

A special thank you to Mark Hagerty, MSOB and CME/CE content developer, who kindly shared some of his decades-long instructional design expertise on an episode of the Write Medicine podcast. His thoughts on creating more human-centered content informed this article. 

Use Your Storytelling Skills to Connect with Learners

Empathy, a crucial resource for healthcare providers, is born from shared experiences. In order to connect with your audience in an authentic way, you’ll need to show them that the scenarios they encounter in their CME/CE training are relevant to their daily lives. And yet, for medical writers, that can seem like a daunting task. 

For one, CME/CE content often comes with rigid rules and predetermined structure, which may, on the face of it, place constraints on traditional storytelling. When writing a patient case study, you might not be able to lead with a patient’s emotional experience. 

Acknowledge Everyday Emotions in Patient Care

However, simply acknowledging that a patient may be afraid, upset, or very distracted and describing how a health professional can respond to these emotions can infuse enough humanity for the content to be more relatable. “I think the more we focus on the humanity of the people who are in the case study, the easier it is for other people to absorb that,” Mark says. 

Apply Your Writing Skills to Make Learning a Journey

Your CME/CE writing can be ten times more engaging if you start by crafting patient cases that are authentic and relatable to the health professionals participating in the education activity. Another storytelling element to infuse into your content? Conflict and resolution. 

Every good story shows a struggle, the journey to a better outcome, and the final result. CME/CE case studies, needs assessments, and other education deliverables are no different. Adding these narrative elements into your content doesn’t just add interest or some entertainment value — it helps learners retain information better and ultimately leads to higher competencies.

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Emotions as a Resource in CME/CE Medical Writing

Sometimes emotions are seen as superfluous or even dangerous in CME/CE content. After all, we assume that health professionals must act cool and collected, even as those around them are losing composure. However, denying the emotional experiences of health professionals can have a detrimental effect on learning.

“Saying that we need to cut out the emotional content is like saying I need to shut off half of you as a human being in order to teach this, and it just doesn't fit in the real world later on,” Mark explains. He emphasizes that acknowledging the presence of emotions like frustration, anxiety, and fear in health professionals and providing examples of how characters deal with them in real time only adds to the learning experience.

Turning health professionals into protagonists of their learning also makes them more invested in the content and more likely to complete the education activities s in a timely manner. 

Break Out of the (Text) Box

For many people, text-only content is not the most effective way to learn. Text-only content can be especially challenging for health professionals who already have a busy schedule, yet find themselves adopting the role of learners  in between various complex responsibilities. And yet, much of current CME/CE content is text-based.

In addition to narrative elements, Mark recommends creating CME/CE content that invites learners to experience the concepts, not just read about them. This can be as simple as adding visual elements, like images and infographics, as well as subtitled videos or audio clips throughout the education activity. For in-person or more involved online content, this approach could alsoinclude hands-on practical exercises. 

Infusing Empathy into CME/CE Content 

Consider some of these tips when working on your next continuing medical education project.

• Look for the human element in CME/CE medical content. What is the real story behind the facts and the concepts? Ask yourself what’s on the line and why your audience should care.

• Identify opportunities for narrative. Here's a question: How can you make your audience connect with the protagonists in your content, whether that’s patients in a case study or characters in a scenario? What challenges do these characters need to overcome?

• Engage the senses. How can your audience experience the content in a variety of ways? Is there room for audio/visual elements, interactive activities, or quizzes?

• Keep instructional design principles in mind. Much like the PDSA (plan, do, study, act) in research studies, instructional designers use a system called ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate). You can use this system when developing CME/CE content in order to gauge its effectiveness.

Though we write for a specialized field, and some of us may even be former clinicians, medical writers are still writers. Inn many ways our responsibility to create content that sticks with our audience.

Take Your Successful CME Writing Career to The Next Level

It's vital to connect with our readers in content created for continuing medical education purposes. We aren't just sharing interesting information; we're ensuring that healthcare professionals stay updated with best practices by engaging with our CME/CE materials. Remember to engage your audience with interesting narratives, teaching tools that go beyond text, and empathy that stems from shared experiences.

Want to learn more about how to create engaging CME/CE content in your medical writing career?  Join WriteCME Pro today to take your CME writing skills to the next level. 

→ Join WriteCME Pro, a CME-specific, skills-based membership for CME writers who are ready to create CME content with confidence. 

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