Curtis Kitchen's Unexpected Turn from Broadcasting to Medical Education sponsored by BrainNet Consulting Inc.

Ever wondered how a passion for motorsports and sports radio could lead someone to the cutting edge of healthcare simulation? Buckle up, because that's exactly the road Curtis Kitchen, Director of Marketing for the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, has traveled. In our latest episode, Curtis shares his fascinating career trajectory—a journey that veers from the fast-paced world of racing and broadcasting, through the meticulous craft of magazine publishing, and straight into the heart of association management. As we anticipate the International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) 2024, Curtis offers a front-row seat to the shifting challenges and advancements in clinical education and simulation, proving that a diverse background can fuel innovation in any field, especially in the post-pandemic era of healthcare training.

Stepping into the studio, we get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how an informal dinner conversation ignited a vision for self-produced healthcare simulation content. The thrill of event planning, with its unpredictable mishaps and last-minute scrambles, takes center stage as Curtis likens it to the unseen frenzy of ducks' feet beneath calm waters. He regales us with tales from the IMSH's evolution, including the strategic implementation of video and podcasting to enrich the conference experience. It's not all about the tech, though—the human element shines through as Curtis reflects on the unexpected detour that brought him into the medical simulation space, underscoring the value of varied experiences in driving the industry forward. Join us for a candid and insightful exploration into the world where healthcare meets simulation, and discover the exciting future that lies ahead.

Curtis Kitchen's email : CKitchen@SSH.org 

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Transcript

Disclaimer/ Intro: 0:00

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Sim Solutions or our sponsors. Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Sim Solutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, Deb Tauber, and co-host Jerrod Jeffries as they sit down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.

Deb Tauber: 0:54

Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe. Thank you for joining us today. Our sponsor is BrainNet Consulting. Are you embarking on a medical simulation center project? Whether it's from the ground up or enhancing what you have, brainnet Consulting is your trusted partner. Their expertise isn't just in design. They ensure your center has the necessary infrastructure, optimal layout, cutting edge technology and is primed for accreditation. With 29 successful global projects, they know what it takes to create a center that's ready for tomorrow's education needs. Contact BrainNet Consulting. We're building the future of medical simulation today. So thank you, BrainNet, and welcome guests. Today we have Curtis Kitchen. And how are you today, Jerrod?

Jerrod Jeffries: 1:46

I'm doing great. I'm excited we got Curtis here. This is a long time coming, I think I mean it's perfect timing. I haven't been a few weeks anymore, just a week before really, and I'm sure he's already having a few gray hairs given everything coming up to it. So excited to get into this week.

Deb Tauber: 2:02

Welcome, Curtis, and why don't you give us an introduction about yourself and your role within SSH?

Curtis Kitchen: 2:07

Sure, thank you for having me and yes, I had gray hair before today, but the last few weeks always add. Last seems like it adds a lot. But, yeah, hi again, thanks for having me. I am Curtis Kitchen. Director of Marketing for the Society for Simulation and Health Care. I have been now, I guess, with SSH since January of 2019. So coming up on well, real close to five years within a few days, and so it's been a whirlwind of five years. Some days feels like it's been even longer, some days even shorter, but we're here and really, really excited for IMSH 2024. It's been a momentum build, if you will, since we all came out of the pandemic, but here we are and I think we're on the cusp of some really cool stuff.

Jerrod Jeffries: 2:51

So thanks for that, and I think having the Director of Marketing a week before really appreciate the time, Curtis. But before we get too much into IMSH, I'm curious a little bit more about you personally, though. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and really what got you into simulation?

Curtis Kitchen: 3:08

Yeah, I will try my best to keep it semi on topic, even though my career path is not. I guess now I'm my first job out of school I got into a public relations role with Sports Car Club of America. It was a non-profit, but I didn't know I was going into non-profit work. I was looking more on the comms and marketing side of things and it landed me as their manager PR manager for the United States Rally Championship. If you have any listeners who know what rally racing is, with high-powered cars in the middle of nowhere on dirt, roads or snow or mountains or wherever have terrain will race is basically how that goes. And so I did that for a few years, learned a lot about motor sports in that time and enjoyed it. And then had an opportunity to open up here locally in Kansas City to join a sports radio station and back. That was in the mid-2000s-ish, so 0506, something like that, Back when sports radio everyone thought that's what it was just going to be the future of media.

Curtis Kitchen: 4:08

And so I did that for full time for five or six years, learned a whole lot, got to put all of my journalism, collegiate training into effect and I had a lot of fun covering some local sports here in Kansas City and then left. That got into magazines, I guess, and the business side of magazines learned a whole lot about the other side, not just writing and content and that stuff, but how to make money at it right, the advertising, the layout and design, the science behind all of that stuff. And it was really cool because it was for a magazine called Broadcast Engineering. I got to cover broadcast tech, the satellite dishes, the trucks you see outside events, the semi-trailers that are packed full of equipment, knowing what all of that stuff did, and our readership were all the engineers who know how to make that stuff work, down to the physics level. And so I learned a whole lot there.

Curtis Kitchen: 5:01

And then answered a blind ad for an editor for a magazine here in Kansas City for an association and it turned out to be the National Auctioneers Association and that they sucked me in through the editor role and I found out quickly that it was mostly about association management and not so much about just marketing comms, and so I worked as the director of communications for them for a little over five or six years five-ish years I guess really fell in love with association management in general. Basically, how to. You know how do we achieve goals at a strategic level and help associations run at their best with their members and on and outward. And so I was in that role and then looked around a little bit, wanted to spread my wings and, through a local connection on a board that I was serving, on Kevin Helm, who used to be the associate executive director for SSH, he and I were working together. I knew they were looking for a director of marketing and eventually I applied and I got the job and so I came over here in, like I said, January of 2019 and been here ever since.

Curtis Kitchen: 6:09

So I tried to warn you at the beginning of this story that it's long and twisted and in no way had a direct path to what we're doing now. But here we are. So I went from motor sports to sports, to broadcast tech, to auctions, to health care, to SIM and, you know, try to use all of that experience in some way every day.

Jerrod Jeffries: 6:29

But the most interesting people have those juggles and you can relate on so many different paths because I mean, you summarize it really well. But one is how do you like that transition from I don't want to say adrenaline and high powered sports, but you know two different industries. Granted, you have the red common thread of media and marketing, of course, but how do you feel that contrast or what compares?

Curtis Kitchen: 6:50

Yeah, I think you find it in different ways. Right, it's not so much about well, at times you know deadlines and you know activities and events and things like that. But thinking about what we're doing here, right, it's funny. One of my old jobs in that whole mix, I had a boss who always said you know, what we're doing here is not brain surgery. It was a really good perspective then. You know it was to keep it light and know that we were working on things that were important to us.

Curtis Kitchen: 7:13

Yes, but not in the grand scheme of life, can't say that here, right, a lot of the people we're doing here actually do lead to better outcomes and patient safety and things. And so, knowing it's not pressure, that's not quite the world I'm looking for, but it's a different way to get that same fix, if you will, in terms of knowing what you're doing is important or vital and knowing that you know, maybe from not from a comms and marketing standpoint, but if I know what I'm doing is leading people who belong in this space and can even be better at what they do because they joined our space, that does make it feel important. And so I look at it in different ways. And what am I doing every day to help connect the right people so that they get the resources they need, get the connections they need, so that, at the end of the day, if they all end up doing some really life changing work literally, or life saving work, that's pretty cool.

Jerrod Jeffries: 8:04

Well, and it's just, it's so much more purposeful because you're actually helping push society forward. Where I think and that's one place that we're very fortunate of working within healthcare, you know, in simulation even more so, as like you're actually able to make such a difference and it's actually helping so many lives.

Curtis Kitchen: 8:20

Yeah, and I would say too, it's that, plus I think you nailed it the fact that SSH is only 20 years old and so a lot of associations have been around, you know, since unions were really big and association drives. You know, you see a lot of 100 year plus 50 year, plus 80 year plus groups. We're not that, even though medicine has been around for millennia, right. So the fact that this is so new, the industry is so new, the mindset and the modeling and the things that we're producing are, in a lot of times, brand new. That's really fun.

Curtis Kitchen: 8:53

I really enjoyed the flexibility that comes with that. We're allowed to fail, if you will. Quite a bit, because you know it's funny. Sometimes we joke around. You know, hey, what's the playbook for this? And we always answer back well, there isn't one. We all write that down because we're going to need that next time. You know, that kind of mindset it can hinder some people. I think we right now have an amazing group of people on staff and in our leadership that embrace that, and it makes for a really fun and interesting place to work day to day.

Deb Tauber: 9:23

Yeah, I love it. Curtis, when did you start with SSH? What year?

Curtis Kitchen: 9:27

Yeah, January of 2019, coming right up on five years from me and it's been a lot of growth. I mean, in that five years we've set attendance records and also set pandemic records, so it's been one of these things for us and trying to navigate all that, but wouldn't change it.

Jerrod Jeffries: 9:46

And the beautiful thing, Curtis, is you still get your sports fix because you're out of Kansas City.

Curtis Kitchen: 9:51

We're surrounded by sports. Yeah, I can riffle that all day.

Curtis Kitchen: 9:53

It's in my blood. It'll never go away. I've got my K-State hat on here, but we are, we're spoiled here. 10 seconds. I'll tell you that. You know a lot of places in the country have 18, or they're a pro town, or they are just college or whatever Texas. A lot of times you go in smaller towns it's high school. Right here, it is everything. There's a huge high school scene. We have three major universities within two and a half hours of here that are all good. They all just finished this college football season in the top 25. All good in basketball. And then we have the Chiefs Royals Sporting KC. We just have so much here. It's incredible.

Jerrod Jeffries: 10:29

Yeah, well, that's a beautiful, because now on your professional side you're doing more with healthcare but you still get to have I mean, I would say even probably more than a hobby anything you want to do you can kind of get into.

Curtis Kitchen: 10:41

Yeah, I get to be a fan again. I had to put that for 10, 15 years just to be on the media side and I felt like if I was going to do it right, they don't look down on it as much as they used to from a journalism sense or a, you know, a fan site sense. But I felt like you needed to not do that. But it took me four or five years to just sort of put all of that away. And the first time I didn't have to stay after the horn to work or go to work and I could actually just go out in the parking lot with everybody else and go home, that was great. I fell in love with that real fast.

Jerrod Jeffries: 11:09

Yeah, and speaking of work and press boxes and staying after, I want to shift over a little bit into the premier conference in the healthcare simulation world. P and I'm SH, for those who might not know which is coming up here in just over eight days or so, or maybe there's some pre conference stuff, right?

Curtis Kitchen: 11:29

There is, yeah, so it'll actually the pre cons run on Saturday. So if we're talking from the time of recording, we're about a week out, week to week and a half out. But yeah, they'll run on Saturday then and then the conference will start on Sunday.

Jerrod Jeffries: 11:41

So the conference is January 20th through 24th or so Yep. Yep, and I want to get into some of, of course you've been on the marketing side. You offer a different perspective of probably what the majority of us know. See here. So one is tell us a little bit about the press box you said about even the pieces you know. It's great that you have this leniency of experimentation and the ability to fail. Start us from where you start with the press box, where it is now anything you're excited for surrounding that.

Curtis Kitchen: 12:13

Yeah, so we will rewind a couple of years here, because this is, this will be year three of the press box. Already A few years ago, I was looking around our closet, if you will and I saw a real need for more video for us and more content for us and at the same time because so often happens is you have, you know, concurrent goals. Right, I have this list of goals for content. I have this list of goals for how do we market, I am SH better, and this is on and on.

Curtis Kitchen: 12:43

Well, we started to think a little bit and had a really good conversation with Lance Bailey over dinner at SimOps 21, I guess at that point, I think 2021, something like that, and basically cocktail napkin. The idea of what would it look like if we started to, instead of asking? My question was instead of asking media or waiting for media to show up and help us create content, some of that earned stuff what does it look like if we just start creating it on our own and we own it from the beginning and do something with it? Right? No different than again, back to the sports teams. The same thing they do with their PR and COBS departments now on their websites. They don't wait for the journalism, they don't wait for journalists and media to come out and provide that coverage anymore. They hire their own teams to go in and do all the player interviews and do all the team raps and all that kind of stuff. And so, long story short, we started kicking around the idea of what that would look like, and it led to a single small booth back in the back of the exhibit hall floor. Because we wanted to see what happens if we start bringing people in, that we pick and put them on camera and create content from the IMSH show floor and turned it on and cut up this content afterward of the raw feed stuff and realized it was pretty good. It was raw but it was good.

Curtis Kitchen: 13:55

And so then that expanded the next year to what else can we do? How can this be a little bigger? And that led to the incorporation of podcasts, and not just podcasts, but podcasts that we knew existed in this healthcare simulation space already right. Leveraging some tools that are already out there and that you know it's budget consideration. That's some other things again on my checklist of boxes how can I get this done for not much more money? And that led to you all joining us last year. That led to a couple of other podcasts joining us last year in addition to the broadcast, and so we were able to expand the broadcast booth to a much larger area, took the wall down so that you could see the exhibit hall floor in the background. That really added a lot more than maybe I thought it was going to initially.

Curtis Kitchen: 14:39

But being able to see the movement behind everything, along with the interviews that were happening, along with the stuff that you all produced, suddenly you start developing a pretty cool library of things. Right, you're developing hours of content that can not only you know, if positioned right, if you plan through the strategy. Right, you're grabbing all this content at IMSH. But if you talk to the right people about the right things and make it ever green enough, suddenly you've got content for a year, or maybe not a year, but months, right, Depending on how often you're producing. And so for us to be able to find and create new channels for that content to get out and put our people or put you know, not just our people, but others you know some of our trusted vendor partners, our presidential sponsor, for example to get them more opportunities and see more value in working with us. It checked a lot of boxes for us in our hurry and it continues to do so.

Curtis Kitchen: 15:31

All of that said, super excited about this year again. I think it will be a little bit more polished. It's about the same model that we used last year, so we get to just do it again, see if we're a little better at it. But we've already got our eye on 2025 as well in terms of what that could look like additional growth opportunity for it. You know how do we leverage it even more and we'll see where it goes from there. But it's one of those things that, as long as you all the way back to the base idea, it literally is just put your needs down on a list, talk it out and then don't be afraid to just use what you have and see what comes out of it, versus the everything's got to be perfect before we ever decide to roll this thing out. You know, just start with something and build on it, and typically you'll be pretty happy with what you come up with.

Jerrod Jeffries: 16:15

Wonderful, I love it.

Deb Tauber: 16:16

Yeah, me too. I love it. I always call it get the ball in the air If you want to play, you just first got to get that ball in the air, and get started.

Curtis Kitchen: 16:23

Yes, ma'am.

Deb Tauber: 16:25

I'm going to ask a question Now. Do you have any funny stories from the previous events, like any, you know, maybe a blooper reel and things that happened that you weren't expecting?

Curtis Kitchen: 16:36

Well, I'll answer it backwards. Things you're not expecting is, yes, all the time. If you've ever been involved with event planning like large event planning you know that you cannot prepare for everything. You can try, you can talk about it, but there will be something that you just aren't expecting. I don't know, blooperish reel, I don't know. I will tell you.

Curtis Kitchen: 16:57

It's more of a feeling, and a great way to sum it up was with a staff person I used to work with at another job and she always said we are ducks on the water on site and so when you are out in front of attendees and you are just somewhere in the public, you walk, do not run, do not run fast, do not walk fast, just walk. You're still going in direction, don't stop where you're going, but just walk because you've got to appear calm. That keeps everybody in the room calm. That keeps everybody that sees you calm. But in the inside, your heart racing. Your hands are sweaty because you know you've got three things that people just asked for. That needed to be done 20 minutes ago but you still couldn't get to it on time. You've got the radio on.

Curtis Kitchen: 17:36

Sometimes you're hearing things that are happening behind the scenes, so it's more of a mindset, more than one thing I can think of, but it's funny because we always hear this. You know, people are like man the staff is so nice, they're so calm, they helped us so much, and if they could hear the chatter behind the scenes on, this room doesn't have X thing. Or this presenter dumped a coffee on their computer and now can't get it. There are just random things that happen, something like last year. You know, we had bag inserts that were supposed to show up that got lost in a box somewhere. They were supposed to be delivered on like the Thursday. We were there first day. We were there. They found them on Wednesday, the last day of the conference. Nobody knows where they went, nobody knows how they were found, but suddenly this box just appeared and we had to figure out what to do with that at that point. So just again, you can prepare for everything and walk up and still not be prepared for anything. It's just kind of what it is.

Deb Tauber: 18:29

Sounds like working in the ER.

Curtis Kitchen: 18:31

Yeah, I've never been in the ER like that, but it sounds like it. Yes, like it. Just that's why they always say write it down, put it in the playbook, so we know what to do with it next time. Right.

Jerrod Jeffries: 18:41

That's well said. We touched upon the blooper reel per se, but how is it since 19 and of course you've had a, I would say not mature, but overcome the virtual only with COVID and such? How have you seen IMSH even involved? So let's, for the sake of this question, let's, remove COVID from the conversation. Okay, let's start with 19 and 20. And then how have you seen it evolve? What you're doing, and to end with that is what are you most excited about for this year?

Curtis Kitchen: 19:10

I would say that from when my first show was in San Antonio in 2019. And yeah, we've been in San Antonio, San Diego, LA, Orlando and network back to San Diego. I don't know if it's the tools that have gotten better or that we've gotten better at the tools, but from my side, even though we've had quite a bit of growth in staff, we're now up to 19 full time staff and that's a larger number than we've had in the past, and that's a great thing. That means SSH is growing. It means our needs are growing. Imsh is growing. We've set three attendance records and I'm saying that I'm probably getting ahead of myself right now a little bit, and membership would be really mad at me for doing that, but I think we're going to set another one here in about a week and a half, which would be our third attendance record in five years, and then, of course, that would be all time. And so, as we've grown, we've shown that our ability to scale is there. Our staff has grown and been able to scale their duties as such and for me specifically, we do a lot more with video and I mentioned that earlier with the press box, but just incorporating that kind of stuff into, and I guess I'll back up and use that as an example of what I mean.

Curtis Kitchen: 20:18

The show itself has matured. IMSH has matured in a way that there's a lot more polish now, and last year if you all remember the giant ribbon screen that we had in the Plenary Hall that's something that even five, 10 years ago wouldn't have been a need, let alone how do we use this thing, let alone how do we use it well. And so we have learned how to leverage our partners in a way to really put some polish on this conference. That I don't want to say it was missing, we just weren't there yet. And now that we are there, we're doing some really cool stuff.

Curtis Kitchen: 20:54

And For me personally, like I know, I've been producing a couple of videos that will show in the sage, you know, in the plenary it's just positioning things better, putting people in a better position to succeed, not asking volunteers to be something that they aren't and I don't mean that in a negative way at all, but we are what we are, right. Our members are medical professionals or healthcare professionals. We're not stage performers, and so asking them to get up in a room full of thousands at times and be polished and charismatic and flawless up on stage. That's not fair, quite frankly.

Curtis Kitchen: 21:28

So we're finding ways to move around that and leverage their strengths better, leverage our strengths better, and it's making for a really tight knit, entertaining but informative show across the board. And I think we're seeing the results of that through increased attendance, better content. Our processes are seeing it with. You know, we had over a thousand submissions for content this year, well over a thousand. We're going to have over 750 total educational things, not just sessions but hot topics and panels and the rest. All of that is by design and also a result of us being able to scale up as the need has grown, and it's going to be great.

Deb Tauber: 22:07

Awesome. So I got to ask you a question, Curtis. What did you think when you learned about medical simulation? Because you were not in the medical field at all. What did that look like to you?

Curtis Kitchen: 22:19

If you saw my face the first time I walked through the exhibit hall, my eyes were wide. They had to be, and I say that you know, going past, you know even just the vet stuff where you know we've seen the half animals on the table, but going through the birthing simulators and the rest, right, like when you're just, I went from conference I had been at previously was for auction equipment and bidding paddles and online auction software and how to be a better big collar and all of those things. And the next time I went to exhibit hall floor it was for medical simulation and so it was an adjustment period. But I just spent a lot of time talking about how to scale your strengths right, or get to your strengths, figure out what you do well, and I will say this is an association management professional it's less about the content or the tools and more about more about the game itself. Right, if I'm a good communicator and a good marketer, if I've got those skills in place, I can copy paste or remove one set of content for the next, as long as I've got my sound strategy. And so it took me a while, took me a longer while to figure out a lot of the acronyms that float around, but it's really not been that part of a transition, other than I'll say this too having the media background helped me a lot.

Curtis Kitchen: 23:34

Being naturally curious helped me a lot. I did a lot of reading. I do a lot of reading of the journal SSH journal. I want to know what our folks are reading and talking about and writing what's of interest to them. And just having that working knowledge doesn't mean I have to know it. I don't need to memorize it, but it's not new to me the first time I hear it and I also have a general sense of what's important to our attendees and our members when I see them face to face. Great answer.

Deb Tauber: 24:00

Now, if our listeners want to get a whole view of whether at the conference, ask you questions or maybe have ideas for you, where are you going to be hanging out?

Curtis Kitchen: 24:09

Yeah. So, like every other staff, look for the blue shirt, typically with the SSH logo on it. I will be. I'll be pen balling around. Typically don't stay in one spot very long just because if I'm not doing something I'm helping someone else on staff get something done right. Just never know what the list is. That said, if you see me stop me, I'll either kindly beg forgiveness and say, hey, please reach out to me elsewhere, or, if I've got time to talk, I definitely will. But in general I will be around the press box on the show floor, especially mid days, for about two hours. We have our lifetimes, that we call them, and so I'll be down there between 1130 or 12 and two ish. Or if people just want to reach out with a thought or something, they can always email me to SSH. org and probably won't get back to you immediately through IMSH. But when we get back and decompress a little bit I certainly will get back to you then.

Disclaimer/ Intro: 25:03

Thank you.

Deb Tauber: 25:04

Is there anything that you want to ask us or anything you want to add? Leave our listeners with.

Curtis Kitchen: 25:09

I will say thank you so much. You all have listened to my harebrained ideas for content over the last two years and been willing to come on this ride with us through the press box, and I'm super excited that you're still helping us and creating awesome content, and I can't wait to work with you all again in person here in about another week.

Jerrod Jeffries: 25:29

Thank you, Curtis, we appreciate it as well.

Deb Tauber: 25:31

Thank you so much.

Curtis Kitchen: 25:33

Yeah, thank you.

Deb Tauber: 25:34

And with that once again want to thank our sponsor, BrainNet Consulting, our friend Farooz Sekandapoor, and happy simulating. We'll see you guys at IMSH.

Disclaimer/ Intro: 25:51

Thanks for joining us here at The Sim Cafe. We hope you enjoyed. Visit us at www. innovativesimsolutions. com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Innovative Sim Solutions is your one-stop shop for your simulation needs A turnkey solution.