By Lin Lofley

Dr. Evonne Kaplan-Liss (right), keynote speaker at the SWAT Symposium, speaks with members of the audience following her presentation. Dr. Kaplan, a former journalist, and a pediatrician, spoke to the symposium attendees about how they should tailor communications to their audience.

Speaking to attendees of the Sixth Annual Southwestern Academy of Teachers (SWAT) Educational Symposium, Dr. Evonne Kaplan-Liss said educators need to understand that learning to “distill your message” can make a critical difference in reaching an audience.

Dr. Kaplan, Medical Program Director and Instructor for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, offered up common sense and a bit of humor to show that educators can be afflicted with “the curse of knowledge,” and that making oneself understandable is important. If the listener can’t understand, then learning is limited from the outset, she said.

Dr. Kaplan, who has an undergraduate degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School, worked in television network news before pursuing an interest in medical journalism.

Her advice – “Know your audience, and know your goal” – was driven home in a variety of exercises designed to illustrate the difference in how clinicians should speak in a classroom setting, to others in their profession, and to a patient.

Trained in pediatrics and preventive medicine, Dr. Kaplan displayed a strategy for engaging one’s audience – a three-legged stool of Improvisation, Distilling Your Message, and Storytelling. The strategy allows the communicator to employ empathy and clarity in making the desired points.

To illustrate, she displayed the pyramid models of communication used among scientists, and the model used among members of the public.

The former, employing an inverted pyramid, lays out the background for the subject at hand, followed by the details, and concludes with the results. The public pyramid copies the journalistic model, with the conclusion standing atop the structure, followed by story layers that detail the importance of the conclusion, followed by details that support the conclusion.

Education Week, an undertaking of SWAT, included:

• A lecture titled “Effective Feedback” by Dr. Dorothy Sendelbach, Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, and Professor of Pediatrics;
• A workshop, “TeamSTEPPS Implementation Tactics for Clinical and Non-Clinical Educators,” conducted by Dr. Oren Guttman, Co-Director of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Simulation Team, and Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology;
• A poster session; and
• A variety of small group sessions.

SWAT President Dr. Elizabeth Brickner, Professor of Internal Medicine, said she was gratified with this year’s results. 

“There was a lot of enthusiasm and positive feedback about Dr. Kaplan-Liss’ plenary session,” Dr. Brickner said. “Working on communication skills is extremely important in all fields of medicine, including clinical medicine and research. I think that the session really resonated with the faculty from all three schools.”

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Dr. Brickner holds the Charles B. Mullins, M.D. Professorship in Clinical Practice and Teaching in Cardiology.