The myth of ivory tower versus practice-oriented research: A systematic review of randomised studies in medical education

What if we consider research teams as teams?

Research teams are an important means by which knowledge is generated in Health Professions Education (HPE). Although funding agencies encourage the formation of interdisciplinary and interprofessional research teams, we know little about how our interdisciplinary and interprofessional research teams are functioning, nor how best to ensure their success. Indeed, while HPE Scholarship Units and research environments have been the object of study, little work has been focused on research teams themselves. In this article, the authors propose that research teams should be studied as unique instantiations of teams where several individuals work together towards a common goal. Considering research teams as a team can encourage attention to how effective teams are built, supported, and celebrated, it can acknowledge that competent individuals may form incompetent teams, and it opens important avenues for future research. Turning our attention to better understanding how and when research teams thrive should support the development of more effective teams; resulting in reduced waste and redundancy, better mobilization of team members' time and skills, and enhanced knowledge generation. Considering research teams as teams, encourages an understanding that these teams require care, commitment, and effort to sustain them, and it acknowledges that pursuing research in a team context is both a collaborative and a social endeavour.

What makes an article a must read in medical education?

BACKGROUND

The dissemination of published scholarship is intended to bring new evidence and ideas to a wide audience. However, the increasing number of articles makes it challenging to determine where to focus one's attention. This study describes factors that may influence decisions to read and recommend a medical education article.

METHODS

Authors analyzed data collected from March 2021 through September 2022 during a monthly process to identify "Must Read" articles in medical education. An international team of health sciences educators, learners, and researchers voted on titles and abstracts to advance articles to full text review. Full texts were rated using five criteria: relevance, methodology, readability, originality, and whether it addressed a critical issue in medical education. At an end-of-month meeting, 3-4 articles were chosen by consensus as "Must Read" articles. Analyses were used to explore the associations of article characteristics and ratings with Must Read selection.

RESULTS

Over a period of 19 months, 7487 articles from 856 journals were screened, 207 (2.8%) full texts were evaluated, and 62 (0.8%) were chosen as Must Reads. During screening, 3976 articles (53.1%) received no votes. BMC Medical Education had the largest number of articles at screening (n = 1181, 15.8%). Academic Medicine had the largest number as Must Reads (n = 22, 35.5%). In logistic regressions adjusting for the effect of individual reviewers, all rating criteria were independently associated with selection as a Must Read (p < 0.05), with methodology (OR 1.44 (95%CI = 1.23-1.69) and relevance (OR 1.43 (95%CI = 1.20-1.70)) having the highest odds ratios.

CONCLUSIONS

Over half of the published medical education articles did not appeal to a diverse group of potential readers; this represents a missed opportunity to make an impact and potentially wasted effort. Our findings suggest opportunities to enhance value in the production and dissemination of medical education scholarship.

The fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence in medical education research: AMEE Guide No. 156

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medical education has the potential to facilitate complicated tasks and improve efficiency. For example, AI could help automate assessment of written responses, or provide feedback on medical image interpretations with excellent reliability. While applications of AI in learning, instruction, and assessment are growing, further exploration is still required. There exist few conceptual or methodological guides for medical educators wishing to evaluate or engage in AI research. In this guide, we aim to: 1) describe practical considerations involved in reading and conducting studies in medical education using AI, 2) define basic terminology and 3) identify which medical education problems and data are ideally-suited for using AI.

What role does basic research have in an applied field?

Research in health professions education has often been portrayed as an applied field, one that draws on more basic forms of research in pursuing what are primarily practical ends. While there is an undeniable practical side to much of the work published in our field, and in this Journal in particular, this can be problematic when the necessary basic research is not extant. In this editorial, two of this Journal's editors consider some of the challenges in bridging these basic research gaps in an erstwhile applied field, and the implications for the kinds of research we undertake and for the identity of the field as a whole.

Supporting open, collaborative, evidence-based scholarship: considering the future of perspectives on medical education

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Publishing during COVID-19: Lessons for health professions education research

Want to know how COVID‐19 changes health professional education research priorities? Our Editor‐in‐chief argues that in the most important ways it shouldn't.

Developing experts in health professions education research: knowledge politics and adaptive expertise

The field of health professions education research draws inspiration from many disciplines, creating a dynamic socio-cultural context that is replete with contests over research rigour and quality. These knowledge politics are never definitively resolved. Thus, an important question that any graduate program established within the field has to contend with is what should constitute expertise in HPER. In this paper we explore interrelated contextual, conceptual and procedural dimensions of expertise to substantiate our suggestions for a core curriculum for graduate students in health professions education. We argue that an expert in health professions education research should have both an appreciation of when knowledge politics are relevant to their research process as part of their procedural knowledge and also an awareness of why these politics can affect their work as part of their conceptual knowledge.