Karen Farrar

Compounded by silos/specialist cohorts and use of acronyms. Acronyms are shorthand but often turn concepts into alphabet salad, esp in healthcare.

How do we explain what we're passionate about to different audiences—and what does that reveal about how well we actually understand it?

Why do beginners often teach other beginners better than experts can—and what does the curse of knowledge cost us?

The curse of knowledge: the more expert you become, the harder it gets to explain basics. Shifting language for different audiences isn't just simplification—it's proof you understand. Meeting people where they are separates mastery from surface fluency.

"Especially in healthcare...needing a service can mean something isn't going well".
An important point. The digital service (bookings, records, correspondence) is secondary to the actual health service and adds cognitive load the patient/user may not have capacity for. Thanks for sharing.

Proponents "believed that letters were the least reliable cues" to "figure out what a word is"... Wow.

Most don't share these thoughts b/c they're hard to articulate.

Also appreciate your content despite working on different things to you. I enjoy hearing how people apply systems thinking, critical thinking, research skills and cross-functional insights to solve problems where others don't necessarily recognise there is one.

Would be great to hear how that goes and how you capture your internal process & intuitive / experiential connections to show others.

Same. Sometimes the spark happens spontaneously or is triggered by something completely unrelated. And sometimes there's a lot of moving pieces around to try to find the pattern or opening to the pathway.

"AI is not a silver bullet. A savvy leader...might pause and consider how AI is actually going to fit into their overall strategy"
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A lot of Covid hubs/pages just stopped being managed. Not updated but also not removed. Still so much info out there about Covid protocols that are now years old. Even for healthcare settings.

Covid hubs were maintained as long as it was seen as a crisis. Covid is still around but perceptions have changed. It will be interesting to see how long cost-of-living-crisis hubs last (how long until the situation is normalised).

We also got to learn/do diff tasks in physical contexts before having 1 device that conveniently does them all digitally. We can differentiate these mentally but it must be so much harder to develop mental models if you've never known them. And harder to use the device instead of it using you.

Impact as a verb still gets me. And for some reason I can't cope with "went extinct". It's as if they somehow chose to go there.

Currently bouncing b/n different admin systems for two specialists, insurance provider and hospital - for 1 procedure for 1 dependent. All using diff software, processes, billing structures & modes of correspondence.

So much of 'engaging in your own healthcare' as a patient is actually admin.

Yes to all of this.

"Redesigns are emotional, too."
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I've found the gardening analogy very useful when describing the need for content maintenance. But deciding who the content gnome will be is often the stumbling block.

Thanks. Great data & breakdowns but only for AHPRA-registered professions. Still so much missing / invisible health workforce data for other allied health professions. Would be good to somehow capture that centrally too.

Late reply & no resources sorry, but totally agree with you on this. It's so common to see sales/marketing content beyond the sale. Once I've purchased/signed up I don't need to be convinced, just be able to use the product + access support if needed.

Looking fwd to your list. I'm not currently in a content-specific role but still trying to influence thinking, approaches & processes in content for health professionals.

Great article and concept. "The emphasis shift[ed] from just diagnostics and treatment prescription to education and sharing a treatment plan and navigating patients through this." So powerful.

Rory is totally correct on this: letters following a consultation should be written to the patient and cc'd to the GP, not the other way around. It's such a simple switch that massively changes the power dynamics and helps to put the patient back in control.

Great article and concept. "The emphasis shift[ed] from just diagnostics and treatment prescription to education and sharing a treatment plan and navigating patients through this." So powerful.

Would love to see this.

I've raised poor onboarding experiences with orgs (some done thru 3rd parties). Their response was "yes it's bad isn't it but you only have to do it once".

Tech services/platforms seem intent on delighting customers or making their experience joyful. People aren't using the platform for joy or delight. They're using it to get something done. Functional, reliable, easy would provide a better user experience & let them get back to the joy in their life.

Sign up button from national publication with COVID hyphen 19 split across two lines.

Have to say I thought the pandemic would be the non-breaking hyphen's big moment. But apparently not.

Thx for sharing. Enjoyed your earlier post too (7 mths as NHS HoP). How you describe your role as product leader with no individ products + sitting in the service layer b/n policy, commissioning & delivery. So much work needed in this space at all levels in health (I'm in AUS). Look after yourself