One of the most fascinating things about the medical field, and life sciences domain in general, is that it is constantly changing. We’re always on the verge of learning more about the body, its processes, and its disease state. We’re constantly getting new medicines or techniques; new options for curing and managing diseases. It goes without saying, there’s a lot to learn about and medical eLearning voiceover can help.
It’s a field that’s continually learning, just like we do. As we progress further and further into the age of digital technologies, medical e-learning has become an extremely critical tool for the average nurse, doctor, practitioner and researcher.
Anyone working in the medical industry wants to stay on top of things as they are introduced. So with continuing medical education, or CME, we see a lot of online training for the pharmaceutical and medical organizations, and among them we see a lot of medical podcasts.
One Constant and One Change
As a medical voice talent myself, for the past 25 years, I’ve noticed two critical aspects to doing medical voiceovers: One constant, and one that’s changing.
The Constant in Medical Voiceover
The one constant thing I’ve noted over my career in medical narration is the quality of the voice. The approach a voice talent takes in medical content, and the tone of voice we need to use, is hallmarked by five simple, yet unmistakable words that I coach voiceover talents to use:
- Clear
- Confident
- Professional
- Precise
- Engaged
The Change in Medical eLearning Voiceover
Over the years, the thing that’s changed is the way the content is being delivered. In the past we saw a much more top-down approach, not too different from reading a textbook, that more or less said, here’s the material – absorb it.
These days, there’s a lot more interaction. More and more medical voice actors are being hired to simulate scenes and scenarios that have to deal with situations like the patient journey. Care teams, doctors, and nurses, all use content like this, almost like a template to focus their learning and provide insights into the patient’s journey through the medical system.
The Patient Journey
So with the patient journey, you’re usually presented with a patient who has a disease state. Often, you’ll be shown a spouse or caregiver interacting with a doctor or general practitioner. From there, you’re led down a winding path that goes from the doctor, to nurse, to specialist, and so on. Basically, it covers all of the people who will weigh in at one point or another during the patient’s journey and deals with identifying the symptoms of the disease to treatment, and then hopefully recovery.
Animated eLearning Videos
Another area that has become very popular in the last few years is animation. The use of e-learning via medical animation is vital to helping people visualize various processes at the cellular or system level. They help us to quickly understand what’s happening in not just a disease, but the treatment of it as well.
There are also procedural learnings, like new surgical techniques, training on how to manage and handle cutting edge or even standard equipment. It can cover anything a nurse might need to know, like how to administer IV fluids, set up dialysis equipment, or prepare cancer treatments.
Medical Podcasts
Another interesting development has been the increasingly frequent use of medical podcasts. While there aren’t any visual elements in this format, the clear advantage of medical e-learning podcasts is that they are very portable. Whether driving, on a commute, walking the dog, preparing food or even eating it, people can listen to them any time that they want. It’s no surprise that they’ve become very popular; medical podcasts make it possible to be doing another task at the same time as learning.
As a medical voice talent myself, I have worked on more than a couple of them. Some of the more noteworthy series I’ve done include the American Academy of Family Physicians, where I was the medical podcast narrator for 15 episodes, and a fascinating internal podcast series on genetics for Novartis. These are just two among many, many internal podcasts I’ve done for various pharmaceutical companies over the years.
New Trends in Medical eLearning Voiceover
Finally, one crucial component to medical e-learning, of course, is the knowledge check at the end. Usually, presented to the listener as some sort of quiz upon completion, they’re there to make sure the student has retained most of the information presented; generally with pass rates of at least 80% or more.
And although a lot of eLearning content creators have introduced gamification to entice their students and keep them motivated, this is something that we find a little bit less of a trend in this field as opposed to other types of eLearning material. And that’s it! I hope you’ve found this post helpful and if you’re interested in learning more about medical narration, you should check out my recent posts on how to pursue a career in medical narration, where to find work as a medical voice talent, and the different types of medical voice over.