Curriculum

Writing for Patient Education will offer an overview of patient communications and provide learners with a framework for creating materials that patients, families, and caregivers can use. It will address the difference between need-to-know and nice-to-know information, explore the various formats of patient information, evaluate real-world examples, and engage students in rewriting existing samples and creating their own samples to start building a work portfolio.

Healthcare advertising is a multibillion dollar industry. Promotional medical writers play an integral role in the conceptualization and development of digital and printed healthcare marketing material. This course takes learners behind the scenes of healthcare advertising to understand how the industry works and how to develop compelling advertising copy against the backdrop of a highly regulated advertising environment. Students will apply the principles of promotional medical writing (i.e., medical copywriting) through several small assignments and the production of a piece of marketing material (speculative work) for use in their portfolios.

Accredited and nonaccredited education are vital for keeping health professionals apprised of rapidly evolving healthcare and therapeutic landscapes. On the accredited side of education, health professionals are required to earn continuing medical education / continuing education for health professionals (CME/CE) credits to maintain their professional licenses. Accredited education is regulated via the independent oversight of accreditation bodies, such as the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. Nonaccredited education focuses on educating health professionals on specific therapeutic areas of a given product. Medical writers are instrumental in developing both types of education. To ensure that CME/CE content meets the needs of health professionals, medical writers should be knowledgeable about and able to apply principles of adult learning, emerging insights from the learning sciences, and fundamentals of content integrity to their work. This course provides an introduction to creating educational content for health professionals that is reliable, accurate, and free from commercial influence.

This course will equip medical writers with knowledge and practical skills in creating high-quality, evidence-based educational content for health professionals, ensuring that it aligns with the rigorous standards of both accredited and nonaccredited continuing education, fosters ongoing professional development, and upholds the highest levels of integrity and accuracy free from commercial influence.

Students will demonstrate these objectives by completing a portfolio  that incorporates best practices in adult learning, adheres to ethical standards for content integrity, meets the specific needs of a chosen healthcare audience, and aligns with established learning outcomes frameworks.