Calling All Experienced CME Writers

Graphic courtesy of The AMWA Journal

We’d like your insights on the best way to write an educational needs assessment (NA). The annual survey on best practices will remain open until Friday, October 19. All respondents will receive the raw results by November 30. Here's the link.

Co-investigators for this year's survey are Andrew Bowser, ELS, CHCP, of Narberth, Pennsylvania and Donald Harting MA, MS, ELS, CHCP, of Downingtown, Pennsylvania (the author of this blog post).

Every survey since 2014 has contained 10 questions. While some are repeated to track trends, this year new questions address where to find quotations from patients, whether non-peer reviewed materials belong in your reference list, and any unprofessional practices you may have noticed in NAs written by others. We are repeating questions about sources of evidence, charts and graphics, the patient perspective, and certain bread-and-butter details that all professional writers and editors care about such as lead time, word length, and pricing (if applicable). If you have written at least several needs assessments, please consider answering the questionnaire.

Analyzed results will be presented at professional meetings of medical writers and continuing educators. For example, a poster abstract with 2017 data has been accepted for display at the annual meeting of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) in Washington D.C. next month. A similar poster, featuring 2018 data, has been accepted for display at the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions in National Harbor, Maryland, in January of 2019.

In recent years, data from this annual series of surveys have been incorporated into a variety of posters, journal and newsletter articles, and workshops. Links to a handful of these resources are shown below. 

Workshop slide deck delivered at AMWA annual meeting in 2017.

Poster displayed at Mid-Atlantic Alliance for CME in 2016.

Journal article published in The AMWA Journal in 2016.

Mini tutorial for AMWA members published in 2015.

Workshop slide deck delivered at Alliance annual meeting in 2015.

If you are interested in even more information, feel free to leave a comment on this blog post (comments are moderated) or send an email to Don(at)hartingcom.com.