Professional Medical Writing Services: Your Essential Guide to CME
Learn what CME is and what it takes to create stellar educational content for healthcare professionals
Guest Blog: Rhona Fraser BSc BVMS
So you want to offer your medical writing services. Maybe you already do. Whether you're tired of your career as a clinician or a researcher or just want to try on a new career, you've found your way here - and there are a lot of options when it comes to medical writing services.
From regulatory writing to clinical trial oversight, patient education materials, and medical journalism, your options are broad. Today, we'll make the case for continuing medical education writing(CME), a critical and increasingly discussed part of medical writing - and a fantastic service to offer.
Sidenote: There's also CEHP(continuing education in the health professions) for every health professional, not just doctors and CPD(continuing professional development).
As medicine advances, so does the need for physicians to be educated, remain compliant, and continue implementing best practices in line with those advances. That's where CME comes in. Here's your all-in-one guide to CME medical writing.
What Is Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Why Does It Matter?
Continuing medical education and continuing education in the health professions (CME/CEHP) allows healthcare professionals, such as physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, to practice medicine and maintain their licenses, certifications, credentials, and memberships in professional societies. CME writers create the educational resources that makeup CME/CEHP content.
Aside from maintaining skills and knowledge, CME/CEHP plays a huge role in quality-of-care standards. Patients and families expect healthcare providers to deliver effective, compassionate, and safe care. Thus, doctors, nurses, and other health professionals must maintain and grow their skills to deliver evidence-based, quality healthcare.
CME is a mandatory requirement for physicians. Meanwhile, CEHP applies to all licensed health professionals, including nurses, physicians, pharmacists, radiologists, and other specialties, such as psychologists, medical technologists, and medical librarians.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) on the other hand encompasses a more holistic or comprehensive approach to education that includes attitudes and behaviors in addition to disease knowledge or clinical/surgical skills.
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.CME is a mandatory requirement for physicians. Meanwhile, CEHP applies to all licensed health professionals, including nurses, physicians, pharmacists, radiologists, and other specialties, such as psychologists, medical technologists, and medical librarians.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) on the other hand encompasses a more holistic or comprehensive approach to education that includes attitudes and behaviors in addition to disease knowledge or clinical/surgical skills.
Who Regulates CME Content?
CME/CEHP is a broad field that encompasses multiple healthcare professions and associations. Take a look at the chart below for an overview.
How Is CME/CEHP Content Delivered and Funded?
Health professionals can choose from a considerable breadth and depth of CME activities and programs that range from free to expensive, local to national. Formats vary too, from live events and written publications to audio, video, or other forms of digital media.
While formal courses, seminars, workshops, and conferences have traditionally formed the core of CME/CEHP activities, there is an increasing demand for online formats to accommodate asynchronous learning and busy schedules.
Health professionals face several challenges when selecting accredited educational activities. They must consider cost, credibility, and convenience as well as the content design and delivery of the program.
Medical education companies, medical societies, the government, healthcare and hospital systems, and physician's offices deliver CME/CEHP activities that individual registrations, institutions, or industries such as pharmaceutical or medical device companies fund. However, industry involvement remains controversial due to concerns about commercial bias.
The ACCME’s annual report from 2021 shows that registration fees (52%), commercial support (32%), exhibits (13%), government grants (2%), and private donations (1%) contributed to education provider income. While only 7% of CME/CEHP activities had commercial support, this support runs to the tune of billions of dollars.
What Are the Guidelines for Accredited CME/CEHP?
CME/CEHP is either accredited or non-accredited. Accreditation provides a robust layer of oversight to ensure the integrity of CME/CEHP as a vital resource, enabling healthcare providers to deliver high-quality, evidence-based care.
Focusing on scientifically accurate knowledge means that CME providers have to protect learners from any commercial bias or marketing that serves corporate interests.
ACCME has clear and strict guidelines known as Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited CE Resources. These standards ensure accredited activities are independent and free from bias. For example, commercial supporters may not influence the training content or the selection of subject matter experts involved in the development of educational activities or programs.
Medical writers contribute to developing CME/CEHP activities and programs in collaboration with faculty experts. As a result, CME/CEHP writers have a professional responsibility to communicate scientific information accurately and objectively.
Principal 2 of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) Code of Ethics directs medical writers to “apply objectivity, scientific accuracy and rigor, and fair balance while conveying pertinent information in all media.”
How Do You Design a CME/CEHP Activity?
CME/CEHP evolved from simply strengthening the knowledge of the individual practitioner to providing competency-based education that enables health professionals to deliver patient-centered care as a team. While CME/CEHP writers are not responsible for designing education activities, it pays to be aware of the planning and design process.
Education providers consider the best format for delivering education activities and programs with maximum impact. Such formats can include problem-based learning through text-based content and patient cases, small group discussions, role-playing, simulations, pause and reflect, and many more.
CME education planners typically design activities with the end in mind and focus on the needs of the learner as they move through these steps:
Identifying learners. Who are we trying to help?
Defining the professional practice gap. What is the problem? How do we know it’s a problem?
Describing the reasons for this problem.
Developing an activity to improve this problem.
Educational objectives should be clear, concise, and measurable to facilitate outcomes evaluation. Evaluation is a crucial component of CE programs, and Moore’s outcomes framework is a frequently used tool to establish outcomes levels and measures. Education providers assess if the education activities achieved the planned outcomes and if they improved the knowledge, skill, competence, and performance of their learners.
Keen to Take Your Career as a CME/CE Writer to the Next Level?
If you're an aspiring medical writer who would like to apply their skills to all things CME, Write Medicine is the perfect place for you. We teach academics, clinical research professionals, and care providers how to take their investigational skills and translate them into a CME writing career. Find a fulfilling career in scientific communication with Write Medicine as your guide, with expert coaching and personalized mentorship from someone who has been where you are. Learn more about WriteCME Pro today. Access the best medical writing resources online and start your career as a CME/CE medical writer!
→ 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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