ROLES: Public Speaking, Creative Lead, Digital Specialist, Video Producer / Editor
In December 2021 I was engaged as a presenter at the 4th annual Communications in Healthcare Settings Conference, a national virtual conference bringing together communication professionals working in the health care industry in Canada. The goal of the event is to engage healthcare communications professionals “in different aspects of communications (digital media, social media, corporate communications, community engagement, public relations, patient relations, and other areas) to facilitate important connections and expand their knowledge base together.”
My interactive talk was titled “Deepening Virtual Learning Engagement for Healthcare Professionals: Successfully Deploying Online Collaboration Tools” which I co-presented with my SickKids Learning Institute colleague, Alyssa Gumapac. We presented communications pearls gained from the combined case studies of two highly successful virtual education events that we ran in 20221 via SickKids Learning Institutes’ premiere virtual education program “Paediatric Project ECHO” where we work full-time.
What’s the problem? What’s the answer?
The overview of our talk and the communications challenges and learnings that we addressed was put as follows:
Effective collaboration among health care providers is essential for knowledge transfer and improving patient outcomes. Covid-19 forced many to shift to digital options, but historically this is not that unusual for many collaborative relationships, in part due to geographic distances and time constraints. However, the concerns around stakeholder engagement, especially in a digital realm is an ongoing challenge.
Improve your stakeholder engagement and collaboration through examples from ECHO. Learn how they forged a humorous, and educational learning event that brought together physicians, specialists, administrators and others.
Session Learning Objectives Include:
- Priming your audience to the event ahead of time to drive up motivation
- Creating substantive and engaging learning objectives and outcomes, including learning credits
- Structuring the event to ensure it is fun, engaging, and relevant to your audience
Effective Virtual Engagement & Digital Assets
Working with my amazing SickKids colleagues that include Interfprofessional Education Specialists who always play a critical role in helping us translate clinical pearls into resonate education materials and experience, we worked closely with the clinicians and paediatric specialists that included two amazing physiotherapists who were fully on board with thinking outside the box, and creating novel interactive virtual engagments that included our Body Break satirical exercises, communicating salient clinical tools with humour and fun; a Virtual Scavenger Hunt content that bridged the use of physical and virtual space, and created an energized and highly memorable and effective education experience. The event culminated in a unique graduation ceremony that solidified the the learners clinical takeaways and community engagement experience. I’ve pasted a few clippings below to give you a taste of what that was like.