Nwamaka Osakwe You probably find it surprising that they asked me to write 15 needs assessments on the same subject.
“Why didn’t they just rewrite one needs assessment fifteen times?”
They could have.
But it wouldn’t have been nearly as successful.
One of the biggest misconceptions when writing about needs assessments is that it is only about the topic. They’re not. They’re also about the audience.
Take diabetic retinopathy as an example. If I’m writing for an ophthalmologist, the conversation is naturally centered on screening, diagnosis, treatment decisions, and preserving vision. If I’m writing for a clinical psychologist, the story changes completely. I’m much more interested in the psychological burden of vision loss, treatment adherence, quality of life, anxiety, depression, and how mental health influences outcomes.
Why does the audience matter?
Because each audience experiences the problem through a different lens.
That means the educational gaps are different. The barriers to best practice are different. The evidence I need to support those gaps is different. Even the outcomes I’m trying to influence may be different.
Over the course of one year, I wrote needs assessments on the same broad topic for:
- Cardiologists
- Electrophysiologists
- Neurologists
- Internists
- Primary care physicians
- Gastroenterologists
- Nurses
- Managed care pharmacists
And even within the same specialty, I wasn’t simply repeating myself. Sometimes I wrote multiple needs assessments for the same audience because the educational need itself was different. One project might focus on diagnosis, another on treatment selection, another on implementation barriers, and another on emerging evidence.
A strong needs assessment must consider the audience.
Questions I Ask Before I Write
Before I ever begin searching the evidence, I spend time understanding who the learners are.
What does this audience actually care about?
What decisions do they make in patient care? Are they diagnosing? Referring? Prescribing? Monitoring? Counseling? Managing formularies? Coordinating care? Their responsibilities shape both the educational need and the evidence required to support it. What challenges do they encounter in daily practice?
Where do they practice?
An academic medical center and a community practice often face very different realities. Access to specialists, diagnostic technology, multidisciplinary teams, clinical trials, institutional protocols, and patient populations can all influence practice patterns. A gap identified in one environment may not exist or may look different in another.
Is there evidence that this audience has the gap?
It’s not enough to show that a problem exists in healthcare. A needs assessment must demonstrate that the specific learner population experiences the problem. That evidence might come from published studies, quality improvement initiatives, registry data, surveys, audits, claims analyses, or performance metrics specific to that specialty or practice setting.
Why does the gap exist?
Knowledge deficits are only one possibility. Sometimes clinicians know what to do but face system barriers, reimbursement challenges, workflow limitations, patient adherence issues, lack of confidence, or competing clinical priorities. Can the gap be closed by education? Understanding the underlying causes leads to much stronger educational recommendations.
What evidence will resonate with this audience?
Managed care pharmacists may care deeply about health economics, formulary impact, and comparative effectiveness. Cardiologists may be more interested in cardiovascular outcomes. Nurses may benefit from evidence focused on patient education, care coordination, and implementation. Selecting evidence that aligns with the audience’s perspective makes the needs assessment far more compelling.
It’s About Perspective
When the audience changes, almost everything else changes. The narrative, the educational gaps, the supporting evidence, the practice barriers, the desired outcomes, and ultimately the educational design.
That’s why one needs assessment rarely fits another audience.
The best needs assessments tell the story of a specific group of learners, grounded in evidence, viewed through their clinical reality, and focused on the gaps that matter most to them.
That’s why my client didn’t simply ask me to rewrite one needs assessment fifteen times.
They asked me to write fifteen different stories.