Forty years of Medical TeacherTest enhanced learning offers significant benefitsHow can you improve the educational impact of Mini-CEX and DOPS?Why all students should receive addiction trainingWhat is design thinking and how it can serve as an innovative approach to complex problems
Forty years of medical education through the eyes of Medical Teacher: From chrysalis to butterfly
Ronald M. Harden, Pat Lilley and Jake McLaughlin
This editorial highlights how medical education has evolved and the significant developments that have taken place over the last forty years since Medical Teacher was first published.
‘In this commentary we identify four more general trends in medical education as demonstrated in the papers published in Medical Teacher over the last forty years – increased collaboration, greater international interest, student engagement with the education process and a move to a more evidence-informed approach to medical education’.
Celebrating 40 years of Medical Teacher: As the “last man standing” I look back to help us look forward
Hilliard Jason
Celebrating the publication of Medical Teacher over the past forty years, this article offers recollections, data and literature to help explain the emergence of medical education as a scholarly field.
‘Medical education as a domain for research and development has transitioned from being largely ignored during the first 20 of the past 60 years, through a slow growth phase, to rapid acceleration during the last 2 decades’.
Test-enhanced learning in health professions education: A systematic review: BEME Guide No. 48
Michael L. Green, Jeremy J. Moeller and Judy M. Spak
This BEME guide demonstrates that educators should include test-enhanced learning in health professions curriculum to enhance recall retention and transfer.
‘Students who engage in effortful, deliberate attempts to recall information show better learning, retention, and transfer than students who spend the same time repeatedly studying the same material’.
Twelve tips for using applied improvisation in medical education
Krista Hoffmann-Longtin, Jonathan P. Rossing and Elizabeth Weinstein
Twelve tips for those who wish to develop their curriculum with a novel delivery method.
‘Applied improvisation (AI) equips students with ways of thinking grounded in the building blocks of theatrical improvisation, allows them to practice these skills and provides strategies to incorporate these habits into many aspects of their medical careers’.
Twelve tips for embedding human factors and ergonomics principles in healthcare education
Helen Vosper, Sue Hignett, and Paul Bowie
Human Factors/Ergonomics can support healthcare safety and quality improvement (QI) initiatives.
‘Human factors and ergonomics approaches recognize the inevitability of error and seek to design resilient systems which absorb error and ameliorate its impact on patient and staff harm (and overall system performance)’.
If we keep doing what we’re doing we’ll keep getting what we’re getting: A need to rethink “academic” medicine
Michael Wilkes, Christine Cassel and Marc Klau
This paper highlights the need to reform medical education and advocates that an ideal model for training the next generation of physicians is within a high functioning, integrated health care delivery system where outcomes are defined by the health of the community served.
‘Training tomorrow’s doctor’s needs to provide the right content, the right teachers, and the right environment, to the right students’.
Changes in medical student implicit attitudes following a health equity curricular intervention
Katie F. Leslie, Susan Sawning, M. Ann Shaw, Leslee J. Martin, Ryan C. Simpson, Jennifer E. Stephens and V. Faye Jones
This article describes the effect of an LGBTQI + health equity curriculum (eQuality) on implied attitudes among first and second year medical students and the value of dedicated time to explore unspoken bias.
‘Implicit biases are malleable and can be unlearned’.
Evaluation of the role of incentive structure on student participation and performance in active learning strategies: A comparison of case-based and team-based learning
Gonzalo A. Carrasco, Kathryn C. Behling and Osvaldo J. Lopez
This paper compares in first year medical students different incentives for students to take part in active learning groups (a modified team-based learning experience).
‘Team-based learning and active learning group’s scores make different contributions to summative student assessments and therefore provide different forms of extrinsic motivation for preparation and performance’.
Insights into teaching a complex skill: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge in electroencephalography (EEG)
Jeremy J. Moeller and Tim Fawns
Experts identified potential threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge in the field of electroencephalography (EEG)
‘Threshold concepts are areas within a discipline that are often conceptually difficult (“troublesome”) but when learned, transform a learner’s understanding of the field. In EEG education, polarity is the clearest example of a threshold concept’.
Medical students and professionalism – Do the hidden curriculum and current role models fail our future doctors?
Gavin Matthew Joynt, Wai-Tat Wong, Lowell Ling and Anna Lee
Formal teaching sessions on professionalism appear to lead to students’ being able to identify correct choices, however they still perceive that real-life professional choices would not be consistent with good professional practice.
‘Within the informal and hidden curriculum, role modelling is recognized as an important component of medical education and professionalism’.
Teaching to varied disciplines and educational levels simultaneously: An innovative approach in a neonatal follow-up clinic
Mary L. O’Connor Leppert, Vera J. Burton, Rebecca A. German, Maura B. Gentner, Doris P. Yimgang and Belinda Y. Chen
The use of a standardized curriculum in advance of clinical exposure allowed clinician-educators to cater to multi-level, multi-discipline learners efficiently and simultaneously, thereby maximizing time for small group discussion and one-on-one supervision/feedback – the types of learning that trainees seem to prefer.
‘Teaching diverse trainees simultaneously is made more effective by exposure to fundamental teaching points in advance of clinical experience’.
How teachers can help learners build storage and retrieval strength
Janeve Desy, Kevin Busche, Ronald Cusano, Pamela Veale, Sylvain Coderre and Kevin McLaughlin
To be an effective teacher, content expertise is necessary but alone does not guarantee optimal learning outcomes for students. In this article, the authors discuss ways in which medical teachers can shape the learning of their students and enable them to become more efficient and effective learners.
‘For learning to occur, information must be processed in working memory and then encoded and stored in long-term memory (storage)’.
Factors influencing the educational impact of Mini-CEX and DOPS: A qualitative synthesis
Andrea C. Lörwald, Felicitas-Maria Lahner, Robert Greif, Christoph Berendonk, John Norcini and Sören Huwendiek
The authors describe nine factors that influence the educational impact of Mini-CEX and DOPS.
‘With the rise of competency-based education, Mini-CEX and DOPs are increasingly being used as formative assessments to shape and support trainees’ learning’.
Why medical students need addictions training
Rebecca E. Cantone
The author argues in this personal view that medical students should be trained about addictions and how to manage opioids and the people dependent on them.
‘Talking about such sensitive issues requires a skill set that should be mastered early on in training so that providers do not take the simpler route to avoid such a discussion’.
Empathy and privacy in obstetrics: Students abroad
Roshni Mansfield and James Aylward
Two final year medical students personal account of their obstetrics and gynaecology placement in Sri Lanka.
‘As future doctors we are taught not to judge our patients, but we should also know the limitations of our judgments of our fellow doctors’.
The importance of design thinking in medical education
Basil Badwan, Roshit Bothara, Mieke Latijnhouwers, Alisdair Smithies and John Sandars
This article illustrates the key features of design thinking in medical education by describing the activities at the #ElsevierHacks at the AMEE 2017 conference in Helsinki.
‘Design thinking provides a creative and innovate approach to solve a complex problem’.
AND IN THE LETTERS…
A student perspective on preparing for difficult consultations in the clinical environment
Meeting the supervision needs of an increasingly diverse workforce
Comments on “Numerical versus narrative: A comparison between methods to measure medical student performance during clinical clerkships”
Is it time that students received a foundation for research?
Comments on “The pillars of well-constructed simulated patient programs: A qualitative study with experienced educators”