Hi, everybody. I am going to skip the usual introduction today. This is a mini episode because I get to talk about the opening of our library.
Our Learning Library is finally done. It’s been a long time coming, y ‘all, like eight and a half years worth of work. And many of you have been listening for a lot of those years. So thank you for being here.
And you know that since 2017, I have been producing pieces of original scholarship every week. So if you are mathematically inclined, go ahead and figure out how many hundreds of pieces of work that is. And until now, it’s kind of lived in a lot of places on the site, and in various podcast feeds, and in emails, and bookmarks, and in memory. And what it really needed was one cohesive home, a way to make it more useful to you without asking you to scroll endlessly or hunt across platforms.
So I built a system, and I’m calling this a Learning Library. It’s not big. It’s intentionally small. It’s meant to be a calm place to go, because your work already has enough noise and overwhelm.
And yes, it is a library, but no, there are no books. Everything is quick and modular. Putting this together was a big task. I’m genuinely pleased with how it turned out. I think you’ll find the experience is tidy, and clean, and quiet. On the mobile it almost looks like an app, which i’m completely tickled about. And kudos to Rainmaker, my website people. This is not spon con. They were awesome and very, very helpful.
You can use the library for free! Just sign up. If at some point, you want more structure, more features, more curation, there is a Plus tier that you can opt into, But either way, you are welcome.
Because this show has a wonderfully varied audience, I thought that would be a good way to start organizing it: that’s by role. So one of the first things you’ll see if you check out the library today, and I hope you will, is that we have collections organized by role. And then you’ll also see collections organized by some of our most popular cross-cutting topics.
For Plus members, you’re going to see short Playlists that are mapped to specific moments in your day. The Playlists have been especially fun to build because what I did is I mapped episodes to moments. Like before you do something, in the middle of doing something, after you’re doing something, These are to give you like a thread so you can see how ideas connect and kind of steep in the tea for a few moments when you need it.
Also, there’s new one-page mini Guides available. These one-pager Guides are there because sometimes all you need is a reminder, right? Something to calibrate, something to help you shake off the noise. Or maybe remind you of something that you already knew, you just needed it brought back to the front of your mind. That’s what the one-page Guides are for. Quick glance on your phone and you’re good.
I can’t take credit for the scholarship underneath this work. I want to give a shoutout to Penn GSE and to my mentor and friend, Dr. Susan Lytle, for her continued support across the years. Thank you so much, Susan. Because what speaks to me and maybe what speaks to you is the scholarship, the research, the knowledge bases, some of them generations deep. And I’m explicit about this research base so that you can be too, especially in times of uncertainty and instability.
So what I have done is bring some of this work together in ways you can actually use. Because all of this work, and the scholarship that it is built on, is about bringing you closer to your practice. Closer to yourself. Closer to the reasons you got into this to begin with.
Strengthening your professional judgment is what I really hope this will do for you. And you’re often in uncertain situations, muddy situations, conflicted situations. So I’m hoping this library and the work in it can kind of fortify you. The materials, the concepts, the community, knowing this exists. Knowing you’re not the only one who’s asking these questions.
So check it out. When you’re done listening, visit healthcommunicationpartners.com. Sign up, then have a look around. Maybe start with the collection organized for your role.
Now, if something’s confusing, or if something’s missing, tell me, even anonymously, because there’s an old school suggestion box in the library. Because it’s a library. Because I genuinely want to know what you think belongs there. Everything as it is now came from listening to you. So you’ll see there’s plenty in there and I’ve got more in progress. But let me know what you’d like to see next.
This is again to help you strengthen your professional judgment in those messy parts of your work that resist easy answers. It’s what it’s designed for, and I hope it helps. Thank you for listening. This has been not 10 minutes. It’s been real short, maybe like five minutes? to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, audio engineering and music from Joe Liebel, additional music from Alexis Rounds.