Adventures in Upskilling: The Value of Learning Collaboratives for Medical Writers’ Professional Growth

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

5:30 PM – 7:00 PM

Location: Exhibit Hall

Primary Presenter(s)

Donald M. Harting, MA, MS, ELS, CHCP

President
Harting Communications LLC

Slides Handouts

Presenter(s)

Andrew D. Bowser, ELS, CHCP

Chief Developer of Needs Assessments, Conference Coverage, Educational Content, and Outcomes
IconCME
Brenda Wilson, MS, CHCP (she/her/hers)

Sr. Instructional Designer
University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth

Health Care Problem: Medical writers develop a wide range of educational materials to assist accredited continuing medical education/continuing professional development (CME/CPD) providers in planning and delivering effective programs. For example, medical writers frequently develop needs assessments that are included in educational grant proposals. After commercial support has been obtained, medical writers may also collaborate with faculty to create educational content called for by funded proposals. Crafting fair-balanced, clinically valid, and engaging educational content requires a deptth of knowledge along with a variety of advanced writing skills. Obtaining these advanced skills is not always easy for medical writers who seek to transition into CME/CPD writing from other types of medical writing such as regulatory writing, scientific journal article writing, or medical journalism. It can also be difficult for mid-career physicians transitioning away from clinical medicine into CME/CPD writing to find ways to develop the required specialized writing skills. As technology changes so rapidly, it can even be a challenge for mid-career CME/CPD writers to keep their skills fresh and up-to-date. For example, the increasing popularity of interactive patient case scenarios, developed using video, animation, or both, may require CME/CPD writers who trained as bench scientists to develop entirely new skills as screenwriters who must develop, or help develop, screenplays. This poster tells the story of an innovative learning collaborative that was formed by two Alliance members to help both novice and veteran CME/CPD writers hone their skills.

Educational Strategy:

Upgrading skills – also known as upskilling – often means leaving our comfort zones and taking risks. So, after attending an inspiring virtual event co-hosted in December of 2021 by former Alliance president Rebecca DeVivo on the topic of learning collaboratives, two adventurous Alliance members formed a small group to hone their writing skills. Instead of calling it a learning collaborative, we called it a critique group since these are widely used by many writers. The group was co-led by Mark Hagerty and Don Harting, co-authors of this poster. We called ourselves the CME Honey Badgers, after an adventurous African animal seen in a YouTube video. We signed a group learning charter in the best Malcolm Knowles tradition and met monthly via Zoom from January to July. Ten writers were invited and eight signed the charter. No admission fee or tuition was charged. As homework, members uploaded 3 different types of writing assignments to a group folder on Google Drive: 1) a portion of a needs assessment, 2) a portion of a slide deck, and 3) a portion of an interactive patient case scenario. We evaluated each other’s work between meetings, using a standard critique format found online at critique.org. This poster will share highlights from our experiences, discussing why people joined, how they benefitted, and how similar groups could be improved. We hope to offer lessons learned to any medical writers and continuing educators who may wish to form a similar learning collaborative in the future.

Patient-Level Outcome(s) Measured: The initiative was warmly received by participants, whose perspectives will be reflected in the poster. We did not measure any patient-level outcomes.