10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication recently had more than 10 ,000 downloads in a single day. I can’t wait to tell you all about it!
This is amazing. This is wild. This exceeds the realm of the normal for me. I am still in awe. And when extraordinary things happen, I think it’s okay to freak out a little bit. It was hard for me to believe, even as I saw it coming. Our little-podcast-series-that-could recently had more than 10 ,000 downloads in a single day.
In this episode, I’ll tell you all about it. There’s so many new people listening, so hi everybody! I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel and this is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners.
I want to introduce, or reintroduce, myself and tell you what we do at HCP. Beyond the podcast, we consult, we create courses like Equitable Patient Education. They are hybrid, part online, part live, courses. And why do we do this? Because a feedback like this that we’re getting from some of our learners. One said, “This course helped me look at myself as an educator and helped me to step back and analyze how I can be a better nurse.” Another learner said, “Educators could really benefit from this. Quality improvement folks too. Anyone trying to change policy or develop infrastructure.” So if that sounds good to you, go ahead and visit healthcommunicationpartners .com and you’ll see Courses there.
We’ve worked with clients like Cleveland Clinic, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, Bristol Myers Squibb, many more. So we’d love to work with you! Go ahead and reach out. We’re doing this because we’re all trying to reduce avoidable health inequities and promote more inclusive and respectful workplaces.
And at HCP, we’ve had a banner year even before this 10,000 download day. We have 166 episodes and still going. They’re on communication and patient education topics that you care about.
So yes, just the facts: we had 10 ,300 downloads in a single day. And for a niche, a very niche, interdisciplinary, word nerd podcast series, this is just unbelievable. If we were in a record store, we would be in the indie/alternative section because of our approach to health communication and patient education.
But before I get into that, I want to tell you really quickly, there’s a whole bunch of new platforms that you can hear us on. You can listen to tune in, iheart Media, Good Pods, and Radio Public, in addition to the platforms we already had. All of these are available at healthcommunicationpartners .com. If you pop over there, you can get our newsletter, check out our free content library, and transcripts to all 166 of our podcast episodes with links to research because I love linking research to practice. If you’re over there, some of you who have been with us a while and might have noticed our snazzy new website look that we unveiled earlier this year.
This 10 ,000+ downloads in a day is a big accomplishment. And I worked really hard to make this happen. It’s one thing to start a podcast, but it’s another to build a show with consistent episodes, consistent growth. From the research, the writing, to the rehearsals, to the guest preparation, to the music composition, to the recording, to the audio engineering–big shout out to my brother Joe, who’s been my partner in crime this whole time, and our dear friend, Alexis Rounds, for some of the great sounds that she’s sharing with us.
I also could not have done this without you. Yes, if you show up every two weeks and make a podcast episode, for more than six years, you’re gonna have 166 episodes guaranteed. But what’s not guaranteed is an audience. And you’re here, and the amount of intentionality that goes into listening to a podcast–there’s between what, three and four million podcast series out there?! You chose ours. You’re here. You’ve opted into a very specific space.
You’re taking 10 minutes out of your incredibly busy day to use equity lenses to reflect. So I’m officially one of your biggest fans. It’s you who’ve made this number happen. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for downloading. Thank you for sharing. Thanks for getting in touch with me.
If you haven’t, there’s three ways you can do it. Email me, annemarie at h-cpartners .com. Go ahead and find me on Linkedin. You can message me there. You can also visit healthcommunicationpartners .com and click on Contact. A part of why this 10 ,000 means so much to me is that the spread is mainly by word of mouth, so thank you.
Now briefly, for our friends here who are new, in this show I pull from a specific knowledge base about language and learning that I adapt to the problems that you as health professionals and public health professionals tell me that you are having in health care, in public health, in digital health, and the workplace. And these are complicated, multi -layered, intersectional problems.
Back in 2017, when I started this show, the situation and the circumstances that kind of gave rise to it I think we’re all familiar with. We’re certainly all familiar with the dominant approaches to communication and to education. And we’re all familiar with the need for alternatives. So even back in the before times, that’s what this show was about, using equity lenses to look at communication, using equity lenses to look at education.
And then 2020 happens: the pandemic, the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And some of these conversations that had been in kind of just specific pockets here and there,
especially in academic spaces, were global. They were suddenly everywhere, and our show audience definitely expanded then too.
But those situations are still here, and we still need support for everyone involved. Because this is a long road, and it can often feel overwhelming because it often is overwhelming. And you’re staying open, and it takes courage to do this. It takes courage to stay on the path. It takes courage to question assumptions. It takes courage to question ourselves. It takes courage to reflect. It takes courage to be asking these kinds of difficult questions. Because you care about educating people, communicating with people. Not just most, not just the easy ones, but everybody equitably. That’s part of what makes this show community a great community.
And it’s a good thing, too, because this is hard work. We’re dealing with some incredibly complex, deep-seated issues. And we need all the help we can get! And we still have to act with rigor and discipline. And high standards.
So there’s been struggles along the way, and I’m thinking about in this podcast series trying, for me trying to walk across kind of what I know into the health sector, front the education sector, as a non -clinician, talking mainly to clinicians and hospital administrators. There were so many times I was so scared to enter a meeting, I literally had to talk myself into opening the door. Over the years, I’ve sat in I don’t know how many meetings, where the main focus was a medical topic that I didn’t know anything about because I’m not a medical professional. I was just listening for something I could understand, and waiting for when people would start talking about communication. Which they always did.
One of the other struggles was it just the visibility. Like podcasts are an audio medium. It took me three years to decide to put my face out on the logo for this show. I mean, you know,
the problems of being a woman out in, you know, social media land. There’s also been tough episodes. Especially during, oh gosh, during COVID, some of them were just so desperately sad for so long. And then there were episodes where I was afraid I was going to go too far. More often, I was probably not going far enough.
There have been times I’ve really been caught with blindfolds on, and I’m constantly having to confront my own assumptions. One of the hardest things to do has been just to keep showing up. And I wonder if you can identify with that at all? Like when times are hard, sometimes just showing up is all you’ve got the energy for.
But with no exaggeration, what got me through was you, this community. That’s a lot of why I’m grateful for this milestone. You play a very real part in this show achieving the success it has.
If you’re liking what you’re hearing, for the first time ever, I am accepting donations to this show. Your financial support can help cover the costs of podcasting. There’s a donate button at h-cpartners .com/podcast. Here we are, the last quarter of ’23. We’re heard all over the world. Please write or message. Let me know where you’re listening from, because our group is growing. Our ideas are spreading. Who knows where they’ll go next? But I can tell you, we’ll get there the same way we got here. Together, one step at a time.
This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners. Audio Engineering and Music by Joe Liebel, Additional Music by Alexis Rounds. – Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, LLC. Find us at healthcommunicationpartners .com.
