Reducing Cognitive Load: An Overlooked Driver of HCP Engagement

Healthcare professionals are operating under unprecedented pressure on their time and attention. Clinical care, administrative demands, and ongoing learning now compete within increasingly compressed workdays, making meaningful engagement difficult even when educational content is high quality. 

This is not a question of motivation or professional commitment. Clinicians consistently demonstrate a strong intent to stay current and deliver high-quality care.¹ What is increasingly constrained is capacity. In strained public healthcare systems, HCPs are seeing more patients, managing heavier documentation loads, and carrying greater cognitive responsibility—with little discretionary time to absorb new information.² 

Continuing medical education remains essential, but it must contend with urgent clinical realities. When time is scarce, even small sources of friction can become meaningful barriers to learning, regardless of an activity’s relevance or educational value.³ 

The Real Constraint on Engagement

Research on CME and CPD participation shows that clinicians select educational activities based primarily on relevance, credibility, and ease of access.⁴ 

Once an activity meets this threshold, engagement is shaped less by interest and more by effort. Educational experiences that demand excessive cognitive or operational energy compete directly with patient care, documentation, and clinical decision-making that cannot be deferred.⁵  

Cognitive Load and Friction in Medical Education

Two related concepts are especially relevant in this context: 

• Cognitive load: the mental effort required to process information 

• Friction: the effort required to move through an experience—registering, navigating, orienting, and determining next steps 

For clinicians working at capacity, even modest inefficiencies matter. Common sources of unnecessary load and friction in medical education include: 

• dense slides with competing visual elements 

• unclear visual hierarchy that obscures key messages 

• cluttered landing pages 

• confusing registration or login flows 

These challenges do not reflect a lack of interest on the part of learners. Rather, they reflect environments that demand more effort than clinicians can reasonably spare.⁶ 

Why Reducing Cognitive Load Supports HCP Engagement

Recognizing that clinicians are operating at capacity reframes the engagement challenge.  The question is not whether continuing education matters, but how it can be designed to fit within clinicians’ limited time and cognitive bandwidth. 

Research consistently demonstrates that design does not influence whether clinicians value education, but it does determine how easy it is to engage with.

• Clear visual hierarchy that guides attention reduce unnecessary cognitive load and can increase learner interest.⁷ 

• Formats that are easier to scan and interpret, such as visual summaries or infographics, are consistently preferred to dense, text based content.⁷⁻⁸  

• Engagement barriers in CPD e-learning are most often tied to usability, navigation, access, and technical issues—not lack of interest.¹⁰ 

Reducing cognitive load and friction makes it easier for busy clinicians to engage with continuing education. 

Where Cognitive Load and Friction Show Up in CME

The effects of cognitive load and friction are most visible in behavioral engagement indicators, including: 

• registration and completion rates 

• page bounce rates 

• early program abandonment 

• time spent with educational content 

• completion rates for online learning activities 

• frequency of navigation errors or support requests 

While these metrics are commonly used to infer engagement, direct experimental evidence linking specific design interventions to these outcomes in accredited CME remains limited.¹¹ Nevertheless, they offer practical signals of whether an experience fits into clinicians’ real working lives. 

Designing With Respect for Clinical Reality

Taken together, the evidence points to a simple conclusion: relevance and credibility determine whether clinicians make time for education, while design influences how easily they can engage with it. 

When education is designed with clinicians’ real needs and capacity in mind, meaningful engagement becomes more achievable—and learning is more likely to translate into practice. This is why design matters. 

References

1. Price, D. W., et al. (2018). Continuing medical education and professional development: Effectiveness, gaps, and future directions. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions. 

2. Matsuyama, Y., et al. (2024). Physicians’ preferences for online versus in-person continuing medical education. BMC Medical Education. 

3. Cook, D. A., et al. (2021). What motivates physicians to choose particular continuing medical education activities? Academic Medicine. 

4. Cook, D. A., et al. (2021). CME modality choice factors. Academic Medicine. 

5. ACCME (2023). Annual Data Report: Barriers to engagement. 

6. Issa, T., et al. (2024). Usability and challenges of CPD e-learning platforms. BMC Medical Education. 

7. Mayer, R. E. (2020). Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

8. Harrison, S., et al. (2019). Infographics vs text summaries of medical research. Medical Education. 

9. Ratwani, R. M., et al. (2019). EHR usability and physician cognitive workload. JAMA Network Open. 

10. Issa, T., et al. (2024). CPD platform usability barriers. BMC Medical Education. 

11. Nielsen Norman Group (2019–2024). Healthcare UX and usability research.