A Tribute to A Mother

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Today is Mother’s Day and I have decided to step away from professional content and share an excerpt from a poem written by my Grandmother, Louise Johnson (who is sadly no longer with us),  published in the National Library of Poetry.

Mother, you tried to help me when I was down.

My head bent low in despair.

“I knew you would come,” I said through my tears.

When I call you are always there.

 

“I can’t help, ” you whispered and turned away.

“You know where you’ve already been.

You must take that first step to help yourself

Your help must come from within.”

 

You saw the strength I didn’t know I had.

You saw the person I was meant  to be.

That a life worth living is a life worth giving.

I must grow from a seed into a tree.

Louise C. Johnson

 

 

 

Making Ordinary Medical Education Presentations Extraordinary

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Recently, I was studying how to improve my own presentations when something occurred to me. CME and CE presentations don’t play by the same rules as presentations given in other industries. Being in the pharmaceutical and medical education industries, I have heard literally hundreds of CME and CME presentations. And when I think about the presentations that have really moved or inspired me, not one single medical presentation has really stood out. It made me ask this question: Why aren’t healthcare professionals receiving the same high-quality of presentations CME or CE that you might get in say, a marketing conference? I realize that the type of information communicated is not necessarily comparing apples to apples. But it’s not just about what information is delivered but the way that information is presented that affects the translation into practice.

The problems with today’s medical presentations

Let’s face it. The majority of medical presentations are given by expert clinicians or researchers (which is a good thing). The problem is that many of these medical presenters have not had much basic training in writing and delivering presentations.

The majority of medical presentation slides are riddled with bullet points and many presenters tend to read from the slides. In the words of Hubspot: “Guns don’t kill people. Bullets do.”

Data is often presented in confusing (and boring) tables and graphs. Don’t get me wrong, with a science degree, I can appreciate the necessity and importance of evidence-based data but let’s deliver it in a way that inspires.

Despite the use of case studies, medical education participants are still unable to connect much of what is being presented to their own practice.

What’s missing? The pictures, the story, and the emotion.

As the guardians and healers of our health, we often put healthcare professionals up on a scientific pedestal and overlook their human sides.

What can medical presenters do to make their presentations better? Let’s go back to the basics and view the elements of any good presentation and presenter:

1) They use pictures! It’s called the picture superiority effect and it’s got tons of research to back it up. It basically tells us that humans more easily recall information presented as a picture as opposed to words. In addition, our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster than written text. The presenter’s task in (Steve Jobs’ and Marta Kagan’s words) is to “simplify the ultimate sophistication”. Get rid of the bullets in favor of a simple, compelling picture or short video. Show rather than tell why the audience should care.

2) They tell stories and engage our emotions.

Presenting data alone is not enough to get healthcare professionals to recall information, much less change their practice. The key to getting more recall? Tapping into their emotions (remember, they are human). Research shows that emotionally charged events (ECS) stick in our memories longer and can be recalled with greater accuracy. So instead of presenting facts, adding an emotional element or story to a presentation will drive more retention of knowledge. Don’t forget, people are unlikely to implement something they can’t fully remember. Bottom, line, everything else may be forgotten except how a medical presenter made their audience feel!

Medical education providers, next time you recruit faculty for a medical presentation, don’t be afraid to impart some of these pearls of wisdom. After all, many of them don’t know how to make their presentations better and you can’t change what you don’t know!

 

 

How Far Medical Education Has Come

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The last few years, there has been a lot of public scrutiny of medical education, particularly CME, both on the provider and supporter side. As anyone who works in this community knows, a lot of changes are taking place and there are plenty more to come. But I’m not going to talk about that today. What I do want to talk about is how proud I am of how far the CME industry and pharma has come since I started my career. I’ll tell you a few quick stories so that you understand why.

I started my career as a lowly pharmaceutical rep for a pretty big pharma company. I literally called on thousands of clinicians and I took my top doctors to expensive sporting events, pricey dinners, and even front row seats at and Elton John concert. That sort of thing isn’t going on anymore….

We sent our top cardiologist to an all expenses paid not-so-legitimate “advisory board” meeting at a five-star resort in Puerto Rico. When another physician I called on got wind of it, he told me, “I might be able to prescribe drug x a little bit more if you send me on a trip” (He was quite serious). Now, most advisory board meetings are legitimate  and five-star resorts aren’t allowed so that sort of thing doesn’t go on anymore….

Fast forward a few years to 2001 (yes, I am dating myself) and I am working for a medical communications company. Back then, pharma companies were not called commercial supporters. They were just called clients. I organized a CME satellite symposium at the biggest infectious disease meeting of the year. The pharma company’s marketing department sent the faculty slide sets for their presentations and during the final slide review, it was the pharma company’s product manager calling the shots. That sort of thing certainly isn’t going on anymore….

Fast forward a few more years and I am working for an accredited CME provider. They are doing everything right according to ACCME guidelines except the CME content team is overseeing both CME projects and marketing projects funded by the same pharma company. That sort of thing is also not going on anymore.

When I hear stories about the bad actors that gave medical education a bad public reputation, I believe all of it and more because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. But here is why I am proud: People in this industry on the provider side, pharma side, and organizations like the ACCME, IOM, and others cared enough about CME to come together and make some major changes. Now, medical education is now evidence-based and commercial support is closely regulated. It’s focus is on improving physician performance, patient outcomes, and quality of care. It is becoming more and more interdisciplinary and team-based. Medical education has truly been turned (as Lawrence Sherman would say) “inside out and upside down” and I couldn’t be more proud of how far we’ve come.

How to Become an Industry Social Influencer with Little or No Original Content – Part 2

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In my previous post, I talked about  gaining the necessary tools to effectively curate and share relevant industry content. In this post, I will discuss how to identify, differentiate, and publish content that is worth sharing.

So now that you have the proper tools in your belt, what are the next steps? You first need a mechanism for identifying content. No need to go on a wild goose chase across the web. All you need to know is what key words are relevant in your industry and your social media management application should do the rest. In applications like HootSuite, you can easily set up streams for specific key words that are important in your industry. For example: I work in the medical education industry so the first 3 search streams that added were streams for the following phrases or key words: medical education, #meded, CMEchat. People may be posting content using a variety of different keywords, hash tags, and phrases so it is important to set up search streams with all of the key words relevant to your industry. I typically place all search streams under a separate monitoring tab so that I can keep these streams all in one place. Once you have set up your search streams, all of the social media posts relevant to these key words will appear in the search streams, making it easy to scroll through and identify important or trending content published by other industry social influencers. If you work within an industry where you only want to monitor content generated locally, some social media management tools have a nifty geo search feature that enables you to search for content generated within a certain radius of a specific address. If you are unsure of how to query your searches, your social media management application should provide you with examples for setting them up correctly. Once you have your search stream set up, you can further filter them by key word or Klout score (a measure of someone’s social influence). After all, your goal is to identify content from other industry experts that is sharable, not necessarily content posted by the entire world.

Another way to identify relevant industry content is to use some of the available bookmarking/trending content applications like Trendspottr, StumbleUpon, and Scoop.it. Search through these applications works in the same way as setting up search streams.

Finally, applications like HootSuite have an RSS/Atom that you can set up to automatically curate and share your favorite industry blogs.

I find that each of these search methods has both overlapping content and content unique to that search method so it is important to use all three methods.

You have taken an important step in setting up your searches but you are not quite ready to start sharing yet. You’ll want to monitor the content on your search streams and pay attention to what kind of content is getting shared by industry influencers, including retweets, mentions, likes, etc. Once you have a feel for what type of content people within your industry respond to, you can take the final step and start sharing. Do not ignore the power of visual content and video content! On social channels like Facebook, visual content and video rules and is much more likely to reach your intended audience.

As you identify sharable content, you may want to keep the title, link, and type of content in a content repository. From there, you can use content within your repository and a tool like HootSuite to compose messages, shorten links into trackable URLs, and send those messages to your social networks. You can even pre-schedule messages to save yourself time.

But what if you are browsing the web and come across an article or other content you want to share right there and then? Social media management applications like HootSuite or bookmarking sites have a nifty button that you can add to your toolbar that allows you to instantly curate that content and send it out via the appropriate social networks right there and then.

You may come across enough content on a specific topic that it may be worth it to use a tool like Storify or Paper.li to compile it and share it via a story or newsletter format. This is the very content that will make you stand out AND become a industry social influencer without creating your own original content.

If you have the knowledge, time, and feel comfortable enough with what’s happening in your industry, you can comment on other industry social influencers’ content or start your own blog where you can share your original thoughts. But first things first!

You are well on your way! If you like this article and it is helpful, please share!

 

 

 

People Who Lived the Saying “Never Give Up”

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Eight people who inspire me to never give up!

Jim Valvano – Took his school to an NCAA national championship against all odds. Died of Bone Cancer but now fights beyond the grave through the V Foundation for Cancer Research

Amelia Earhart – Crossed the Atlantic in a rickety plane when she was told she couldn’t.

Walt Disney – Was told a mouse would never work but later created an empire.

Steve Jobs – Stuck with Apple when it was on the brink of failure and helped it become one of the most innovative, successful companies in the world

Mohandas Gandhi – Went to jail numerous times but eventually freed India.

Elvis Presley – Fired after his 1st performance but is now one of the most successful performers of all time.

Albert Einstein – Was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School but later won the the Nobel Prize and changed the face of modern physics.

Thomas Edison – Had 1,000 unsuccessful attempts before inventing the first light bulb.

 

 

 

How CME is Like the NCAA Basketball Tournament

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Watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament got me thinking about how it’s a little like CME:

  • Anyone has a shot at winning – All it takes is motivating a clinician to make a decision that enhances the life of 1 patient
  • It takes motivation – both self motivation on the part of the clinician and a great coach to help the clinician make the right decision.

Medical educators and CME providers, consider yourself to be that great coach. Happy March Madness!

How to Become an Industry Social Influencer with Little or No Original Content – Part 1

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You may be thinking to yourself, is this even possible and where would I find the time? The answer is yes! All you need is the right tools and be able to differentiate what content is worth sharing. Don’t get me wrong. Original content is always best but most of us have very busy work schedules and home lives as well.

So let’s start with the right tools. You’ll need a social management resource like HootSuite or TweetDeck. As a digital marketer and social media manager, I can honestly say that I couldn’t do my job without HootSuite. A good social media management dashboard will allow you to:

  • Import all your important social networks and manage them from one place
  • Schedule messages and Tweets ahead of time
  • Search for, monitor, curate, and re-purpose content from the most influential people in your industry
  • Instantly share new and interesting web content with your social networks
  • Analyze your social media traffic to see what content drives the most interest and engagement

Hint: HootSuite has a free version but you’ll want to purchase professional version  (less than $10 per month) to get the enhanced features and the most out of this very powerful tool.

Once you have set up an account with a social media management dashboard, you will want to familiarize yourself with how it works. It is definitely worth watching the video tutorials in order to get the most out of your investment. Next, you’ll want to check out these great social media apps that will help you identify and share the most trending content in your industry:

YouTube – Pretty much everyone knows what YouTube is. Why is it important? Videos and photos generally rank higher with Facebook Edgerank and other social media channels making this type of content much more likely to reach your intended audience

Instagram – A photo sharing application that allows you to view and search for photos and share them with your social networks

Trendspottr, StumbleUpon, Scoop.it, and Redditt – Enables you to find the most timely and trending content on the web based on your search terms and/or preferences and share the content effortlessly.

RSS – Allows you to automatically get and share the latest posts and content from influencial bloggers within your industry

SlideShare – View and search for presentation content on almost any topic and share these with your social networks. (You can also upload and share your own presentations)

Storify – This is my new favorite! You can create and publish stories on almost any topic by curating content from various social media channels.

GoPollGo – You can easily create polls and share them with your social networks

There are many more social apps available but I have shared the ones that I personally use the most and think are the most effective.

Now that you have the right tools, it’s time to move to the next step! Check for my blog post next week regarding identifying and differentiating which content is worth sharing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Easily and Cost-Effectively Measure Physician Stage of Change

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When we measure the outcomes of CME activities, we often measure the aggregate change of our entire audience without taking into consideration more modest improvements of individual participants. We also mistakenly measure higher outcomes levels such as performance of even patient outcomes for CME initiatives that are not designed to produce these changes. When considering CME’s ability to produce changes in healthcare professionals knowledge and behavior, we need to first consider what stage of learning our participants are in. Moore talks about these 5 stages of physician change in some of his publications:

  1. Identifying an opportunity to learn
  2. Searching for tools for learning
  3. Engaging in learning
  4. Trying out what was learned
  5. Incorporating learning into practice

Another change model is the Transtheoretical Model which is arguably the dominant model of health behavior change where the stages of change are:

  1. Precontemplation
  2. Contemplation
  3. Preparation
  4. Action
  5. Maintenance
  6. Termination

There are several outcomes companies that help providers measure stages of change for CME participants but I have found them to be expensive and the number of questions that participants must complete often deters participation. Alternatively, I have found that utilizing specific “Intent to change” outcomes questions works just as well, CME providers can implement this themselves, and at a much lower cost. An example of such a question would be the following:

Based on my participation in this CME activity, I will now incorporate [clinical strategy x] into my practice: (check all that apply)
  • _ I already use this strategy frequently or always (If they check this, they have incorporated learning into practice)
  • _ I have tried this strategy but have not fully incorporated it into my practice (If they check this, they are trying out what was learned)
  • _ I intend to use this strategy within [x days] (If they check this, they might be engaging in learning or searching for tools for learning)
  • _ I am considering incorporating this strategy but would like additional information (If they check this, they are searching for tools for learning)
  • _ I do not intend to incorporate this strategy at this time (If they check this, they probably need some cognitive dissonance or a motivator for learning)
By understanding what stage of change healthcare professionals are in either before or after a CME activity, we can begin to design CME in such a way to make our content and instructional design more relevant to individual participants and measure outcomes in a more realistic way.

 

 

 

Consumer Views of Email Marketing that May Surprise You

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This morning, I received an email from a new start-up whom I did not subscribe to receive emails from. If the owner of the company had not been an industry acquaintance,  I would have deleted the email immediately. Why? Because I didn’t subscribe to receive their emails and the content was not relevant to my interests (although because I work in the medical education industry, they assumed it was). It reminded me of a session that I attended at Globalocity last year where I learned these fascinating and surprising consumer views of email marketing (based on a survey of 1,000 consumers conducted by BlueHornet):

  • Only about 30% of consumers add companies to their address book to ensure delivery of emails
  • The average consumer has 2 personal email addresses (like me, one might be for junk and the other for real correspondence)
  • 75% of consumers say that it is NOT ok to receive emails from companies if you made a purchase but did not sign up to receive emails from them (I am one of them!)
  • The most important reasons consumers sign up to receive companies’ emails are:
  • To receive discounts
  • To get product or service updates
  • After signing up to receive email from companies, 75% of consumers expect to receive a welcome email
  • 75% of consumers say that if they receive an email that “looks bad”, it gives a negative impression of the brand that sent it
  • 70% of consumers will delete a mobile email that doesn’t “look good”
  • 45% of consumers never click on “view this email online” and 49% only sometimes do
  • 67% of consumers use their mobile device to triage emails before reading them on their desktop (this is where subject line and snippet text become very important)
  • The top 2 reasons that consumers unsubscribe from receiving emails is lack of relevance and emails are sent too frequency
  • 40% of consumers who click to “unsubscribe” would remain on the list of they could change the frequency and topics they receive

My key take-aways that caused me to rethink my company’s email marketing strategy:

  • Do not just assume that current customers want to opt-in to receive emails
  • Relevancy of content rules but frequency and timing are important too
  • The email not only needs relevant content; it must look good too
  • Optimizing emails for mobile is a necessity
  • Give subscribers an opportunity to opt down, not out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Catch-22 with CME Outcomes

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We are in an outcomes catch-22. Most CME providers can manage the measurement of Level 4 outcomes (Moore’s 7-level model) for their CME initiatives internally but when it comes to achieving objective Level 5 outcomes and higher, they sometimes need help from an outside outcomes company. Many commercial supporters openly state that they give preference to grant proposals that describe objective, level 5 outcomes measurement. Here lies the difficulty: To obtain true objective outcomes (and not use a proxy such as a case assessment), you need to engage in time-consuming chart pulls (which results in very few outcomes participants) or you need to purchase data such as physician level data or anonymous patient level data. Purchased data on physician participants can help us evaluate things like changes in diagnostic and prescribing behaviors resulting from an educational activity. Anonymous EMR data can even show us whether patients of specific physicians are improving or worsening.There are several data vendors that sell this type of data but it comes at a significant price.The more specific you get with data, the more it costs. Commercial supporters want robust outcomes but providing funding that supports it is an entirely different story.