How to Write Patient Education That Gets Trusted and Found Online
By Kathrin Kunze & Valerie Leroux MSc
A practical course for medical writers and health communicators who want to create patient education that supports the person behind the diagnosis, and reaches them through the way they search for health information today.
Created by Kathrin Kunze, a nurse turned medical communicator with around 20 years of clinical experience, and Valerie Leroux MSc, a health SEO strategist and medical writer.
Who This Is For
This course is for medical writers and healthcare professionals who want to become stronger patient-facing communicators.
It may be especially useful if you are:
Medical or health writers creating patient-facing content
Medical translators or linguists working with patient materials
Healthcare professionals transitioning into medical writing or communication
Practitioners writing health information for your own website
Healthcare marketers responsible for educational content
Health communicators
This course is appropriate for SEO beginners.
If you already know how to research and communicate the science but want your patient content to feel clearer, more empathetic, more useful, and more visible, this course is for you.
What You’ll Learn
Course objective: To help your patient content reach and support more people
This course will help you create patient education and transfer your expertise into content that is clear, human, empathetic and easier to find.
You’ll learn how to explain health information in a way that patients can understand and trust, while also helping that content reach the people searching for answers.
1. Understand what patients really need
Learn to think about the person reading your content: what they may be worried about, what they need to know first, and what could make the information easier to understand.
2. Make health information easier to understand
Learn how to use plain language, avoid too much jargon, and explain complex topics clearly without losing accuracy.
3. Write with more empathy and care
Learn how your tone, structure, and choice of words can help patients feel respected, supported, and less overwhelmed.
This is close to our hearts: Kathrin brings around 20 years of experience caring for patients in settings such as oncology, emergency care, and intensive care. Val brings the perspective of a hyperempath who naturally thinks about how the person on the other side of the screen may feel.
4. Help useful content get found
Learn how patients search for health information online (using Google or AI chatbots like ChatGPT) and how to shape your content around the questions and words they actually use, so that your helpful content gets found by people who need it most.
Bonus: See how it works in practice
We’ll finish with a practical before-and-after exercise.
You’ll get to practice and see how we turn a medical paragraph into clearer, more helpful health information that’s easier to find (using the principles taught in the course, obviously).
Course Details
The course will include approximately 60 minutes of focused, pre-recorded lessons, broken into short videos you can complete at your own pace.
Format: Short, practical video lessons + practical bonus (with explained answers)
Investment: $97 USD (early-bird access at $67 USD until December 2026 in exchange for feedback)
Be the first to know when the course opens and receive launch details straight to your inbox:
Why we created this course
Kathrin and Valerie came to patient education from different directions.
Kathrin from years spent inside healthcare, communicating around patients and families at moments when medical information became personal.
Valerie from the search and content side, studying how people look for answers online and how their searches often reveal fears, questions, and needs that standard medical content can miss.
Eventually, those two perspectives met:
How can we create health information that is not only medically accurate, but genuinely helpful to the person who needs it, and visible enough for them to find it?
That is the question at the heart of this course. And it is why we are putting so much care into creating it.
And also… patient education has changed
Patients don’t only receive health information in a clinic or from a printed handout anymore.
They search Google after an appointment. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude questions they were too embarrassed to ask in person. They read forums looking for reassurance. They compare medical advice with other people’s experiences on social media.
That changes how we write patient education materials. Of course, the information still needs to be accurate and easy to understand. But it also needs to recognize what the person may be feeling, answer the question behind their search, earn their trust, and be visible when they go looking for help.
That’s why this course brings together two perspectives:
Kathrin: What does the patient need to understand and feel supported?
Val: What is that person searching for, and how can trustworthy information reach them?
Together, we’ll help you create patient content that works for the way people look for health information today.
What people say about our work
As this is a new course, we’re still waiting for our first participant feedback. But here’s what people have said about learning from us as mentors and experiencing our work:
“For years, I was a general translator, constantly chasing projects. Then I met Kathrin Kunze. Her mentorship did not just give me tips; it gave me a new career identity.
I stopped reaching out to clients. They started reaching out to me.”
“An inspiring and deeply human read that bridges science and compassion in a way few books manage to do.”
“The book is written in clear, compassionate language, using gentle metaphors to explain complex medical terms.”
“You made SEO research feel so much more approachable with your clear, straightforward breakdown. Hugely helpful for demystifying the process.”
“Valerie, as a mentor, is patient, kind, and driven. I continue to receive her support, even on my speaking journey. My recommendation? Take her classes, join her challenges, and explore anything she offers. I would work with Val a thousand times over.”
“Her mentorship played a huge role in helping me land my best client yet, and has changed the way I approach SEO.”
Your Speakers
Valerie Leroux MSc
SEO Coach, Health Writer & Editor, Founder of Bioty HealthcareVal is a biomedical engineer–turned health content writer and founder of Bioty Healthcare, where she creates credible, SEO-optimized content that boosts brand authority and organic traffic. She spent over a decade in marketing roles at global medical companies.
Now, she also mentors medical writers on SEO best practices, helping them write high-performing content and attract ideal clients.
Val holds an MSc in Biomedical Engineering, plus executive training from INSEAD and London Business School. She brings a global perspective to ethical, effective health communications.
Kathrin is a nurse turned medical communicator, translator, author, and founder of Kathrin’s Medical Linguistics.With around 20 years of clinical nursing experience across oncology, emergency care, intensive care, internal medicine, and other specialties, she has seen firsthand what happens when patients and families suddenly have to make sense of unfamiliar and often frightening medical information.
Today, Kathrin specializes in patient-facing medical, cancer, and clinical trial content, helping companies, organizations, and fellow linguists make complex medical language clearer, warmer, and easier to understand. She is the author of several books, including How to Speak Cancer, and supports fellow medical communicators and linguists in bringing meaningful book projects to life.
Kathrin is also the founder of MedTalks with Kathrin, a free educational webinar series for medical linguists, healthcare professionals, and patients, and co-organizes MedTranslate, an international conference for medical translation and communication. She is also a regular guest in podcasts and speaks about medical language, patient communication, cancer communication, and the bridge between healthcare and language.
Her mission is simple: to make medical language accessible for all — with accuracy, empathy, and care.
Get a feel for Kathrin’s style
In this introduction, she shares how her 20 years in nursing shaped the way she explains complex medical information in clear, patient-friendly language.
Get a feel for Val’s style
Val is all about sharing practical tips and real-life examples that she knows non-marketers and writers will understand. Here, she’s explaining search intent and one of AI’s limitations in providing empathy (much needed in patient education and health blog work).
Your Questions, Answered
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No, this course is focused on writing for patients. You’ll learn how to make health information clear, easy to understand, trustworthy, and easier to find online.
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Yes. The course covers practical principles for structuring and writing patient-facing health information clearly, including jargon reduction, plain language, health literacy considerations, information hierarchy, empathy, and readability.
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Plain language writing for patients is an important part of the course, but it is not the only focus. We also explore patient psychology, emotional context, search intent, trust signals, content structure, SEO, and visibility in modern search environments.
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No. Valerie will explain the relevant SEO and search-intent concepts specifically in the context of patient education.
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No. It will be available on demand so you can work through the short lessons at your own pace.
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The planned launch is November 2026.
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This course is probably not for you if you’re looking for:
advanced technical SEO training
regulatory or academic medical writing
a full medical writing certification
a shortcut to guaranteed Google rankings
generic AI prompts to create patient content for you
This course is for people who want to become better at writing clear, human, trustworthy patient education that can also be found online.
Be the health communicator who sees the person behind the information.
Create health content that gets the science right, makes sense, feels human, earns trust, and reaches the people who need it.