No One Came to My Talk! Applying Communication and Marketing Principles to Faculty Development to Enhance Engagement

Leader(s)

• 

  Justin Triemstra, MD, MHPE (he/him/his)

  Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Human Development
  Pediatrics
  Helen DeVos Children's Hospital
  Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States

Co-Leader(s)

• 

  Rachel Poeppelman, MD, MHPE (she/her/hers)

  Assistant Professor
  University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital
  edina, Minnesota, United States
• 

  Anna Volerman, MD

  Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics
  University of Chicago, United States
• 

  Michael Pitt, MD (he/him/his)

  Professor of Pediatrics
  University of Minnesota
  Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Workshop

Description: Despite the ACGME’s noble definition of faculty development (FD) as “structured programming to enhance the transference of knowledge, skill, and behavior from educators to learners”, many FD leads struggle with low turnout, engagement, and difficulty tracking outcomes. Additionally, one of the biggest challenges is often the sense that FD is necessary for others but not us.

Many of these challenges can be addressed by applying communication and marketing principles with a long history of success in attracting consumers to products to market FD “products”. Other industries know the power of utilizing emotion, stories, infographics, and micro-learning training to elevate products or events as ‘must-see-events’. Similar tactics can be utilized by medical educators to capture the attention of busy physicians, generate excitement, and encourage participation.

This interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team of educators will introduce core concepts in communication and marketing. The facilitators – pediatric educators with experience leading international FD workshops and applying branding principles in the scholarship arena – will share readily available resources, lessons based on experience, and pitfalls to avoid. Participants will learn how titling, creations of logos, intentional story telling can drive engagement, and how applying one tweak to food ordering was shown to increase attendance, eliminate no-shows, and cut costs in half. Participants will work in facilitated small groups to apply these techniques to enhance their faculty development programming and share via interactive, large group debrief. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will have developed practical approaches to communicate and market their FD programming.