Journal Watch From ACE (Alliance For Clinical Education): Annual Review of Medical Education Articles in Internal Medicine Journals 2006–2007

Abstract

This journal watch is sponsored by the Alliance for Clinical Education (ACE). The purpose of this article is to summarize medical education manuscripts from specialty journals that are important and relevant to educators across specialties. Specialties included in our review were cardiology, gastroenterology, general internal medicine, pulmonology, nephrology, hematology and oncology, endocrinology, rheumatology, infectious disease, and neurology. We are grateful to Teaching and Learning in Medicine and ACE for giving us the opportunity to publish this review.

The Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine Research Committee conducted this review. Included are English articles published from September 2006 through September 2007. PubMed was searched for peer-reviewed research publications reporting primary data on medical education. Medical subject heading terms included combinations of medical education, medical student, residency training, practice, undergraduate medical education, graduate medical education, internship and residency, and continuing medical education. We also reviewed the bibliographies of all articles found though our PubMed search to identify additional articles that may not have been included in PubMed's search engine. Furthermore, we discussed identified articles with content experts in each specialty to ensure that appropriate journals and articles were included from each subspecialty.

The journals that we selected for review are not often read by the typical medical educator. We included articles from general and subspecialty journals of internal medicine excluding the following, which have a focus on medical education or cross-specialties: Academic Medicine, Advances in Health Science Education, Medical Education, Medical Teacher, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and New England Journal of Medicine. Specialties included in our review were cardiology, gastroenterology, general internal medicine, pulmonology, nephrology, hematology and oncology, endocrinology, rheumatology, infectious disease, and neurology. We also reviewed the bibliographies of all articles found though our PubMed search to identify additional articles. Furthermore, we discussed identified articles with content experts in each specialty to ensure that appropriate journals and articles were included from each subspecialty.

Authors rated each article based on relevance, rigor, importance, and generalizibility of findings. We also sought to include articles from each phase in the continuum of medical education: undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education as well as qualitative and quantitative studies. Articles were ranked by each author. We then held conference calls and had e-mail discussions to establish consensus on the articles included in this review. The following is a summary of each selected article grouped by theme.