AD-vice: Strategies for Successful AD Program Management

Curated By: Aanchal Gupta, Program Coordinator, NaRCAD

Tags: ADvice, Program Management, Training
 
Academic detailing program managers oversee and coordinate all aspects of an AD program to ensure its success, impact, and strengthen the detailing team. They have a crucial role in achieving team goals. In this edition of AD-vice, we’ll look into how program management in AD contributes to team and program success.

Team Building and Support:

• “Having a team that is well-prepared, confident and excited to bring this information to the practices is the cornerstone to a successful detailing program.” – Michelle Dresser, MPH, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

 

• “It can be lonely when you’re in the field detailing by yourself, so managers need to have touchpoints with their detailers. Building trust and having your detailers know you’re all working together helps them stay self-motivated; it makes them want to go out into the field and do a good job because they know someone is backing them up.” – Tony de Melo, RPh, Alosa Health

 

• “… a strong detailing team supports one another. That support can be helping each other out in the detailing session itself (e.g., co-detailing), or through communicating with each other about the providers we serve and in between detailing sessions. We want the team to be successful in moving towards our goals together.” – Marlys LeBras, PharmD, RxFiles Academic Detailing Service

 

• “It’s also important to know that with your team, you’re never alone. You don’t need to know everything to be a leader, but you need to surround yourself with people who can collectively make decisions based on good information. Surround yourself with people who know more than you do, and listen to them.” – Liesa Jenkins, MA, ONE Tennessee

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Recruitment and Training:

• “When recruiting detailers, it is more important to make sure to recruit people who have the bandwidth to do the detailing, rather than making sure they have the perfect clinical background. It may be a good idea to create a formalized agreement to ensure they complete their required detailing visits.” – Amber Elliot, BSN, RN, St. Francois County Health Department

 

• “The detailer upskilling process for other visits includes weekly webinars to review key messages and the surrounding evidence, and a two day in-person workshop where detailers get to practice their visit discussions with each other and family physicians prior to launching visits.” – Lindsay Bevan, MScHQ, Centre for Effective Practice

 

• “If you have the capacity, take it one step further by adding practice role play sessions among peers and allow new detailers to observe other detailers in the field. ​​​When training, help the detailers step out of their comfort zone within a group of people that they know before they step out of their comfort zone with a stranger.” – Nicole Green, BSP, RPh, ACPR, DPLA, ThedaCare

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Interprofessional Collaboration:

• “Create an interprofessional team. It was very helpful to get insights from multiple health disciplines since there are many opportunities [within the health system] to encourage patients to be vaccinated.” – Kimberly C. McKeirnan, PharmD, BCACP, Washington State University

 

• “Programs considering hiring student detailers can often rely on the flexibility of students’ schedules, as well as an enthusiasm and energy for learning that may exist in smaller quantities later in one’s career, when full-time roles in healthcare take priority.” - NaRCAD

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Effective program management plays a crucial role in the success and support of academic detailing programs. We hope the insights shared in this edition of AD-vice will help in navigating and implementing strategies of team building, recruitment, training, and more. As always, our NaRCAD team is here to support you and your detailing programs!
 
Best,
The NaRCAD Team

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