Category: BMERG work

Hot Topics: BMERG launches a new page for Abstract Calls!

Posted on by sarah.allsop
Sarah Allsop

Following on from our recent BMERG blog on Building Community: Attending, presenting and networking at Conferences we are launching a new page in the BMERG site to highlight abstract calls as they are released from Medical Education Associations. This list will build throughout the year and aims to support researchers to find out more easily about the timings of annual conferences and events.

Take a look by clicking on the “Abstract Calls!” in the top menu or clicking on the link below:

Access our Abstract Calls List here

If you know of either a medical education and research event or an event with a broader scope that may be of interest to the BMERG audience, let us know in the comments below:

Hot Topics in Medical Education Research: Virtual Reality – what’s the reality?

Posted on by sarah.allsop

The next hot topic under review from BMERG’s Fiona Holmes is Virtual Reality. In her blog she explores the different types of VR and shares and how her team is trialling the technique to enhance education practice and experience for student learners.

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Virtual reality (VR) is not new, but it’s new to me, and I was curious to learn more about VR simulation in the context of medical education: What exactly is it? What has it been used for successfully? What are its limitations?

So, what is VR?

VR is an artificial reality with which a user/student can interact. The main difference between the types of VR is the extent of ‘immersability’ and interaction within the VR.

Fully immersive VR

This is the ultimate VR experience within a virtual environment, disconnected from real life.

It involves wearing a VR head mounted display (HMD) and may also involve other equipment such as haptic (real feel) data gloves, voice recognition and sound software. It puts the healthcare learner completely inside the experience complete with a virtual surgical team, equipment, and patient. Like being in a real-life computer game.

Fully immersive VR has been used particularly effectively in surgical training programmes to practice procedures (decreases injury, increases speed and improves overall outcomes) and manage cases and has been shown to enhance experiential learning and acquisition of cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skills.

Immersive VR can incorporate virtual worlds that can involve multiple participants in different locations. They have been used for training in the management of stressful emergency or major incident situations and can hone attention, decision making, critical thinking, clinical reasoning, multi-tasking and communication skills. However, so far, fully immersive VR hasn’t been used widely in medical education mainly due to the high upfront costs.

Semi-immersive VR

This doesn’t fully enclose the user/student in the virtual environment although interaction can involve using headsets or motion controllers connected to a computer which displays e.g., medical simulations. Augmented reality fits into this category and involves overlaying images onto the real world and it has been used to visualise anatomy and practice surgical procedures on physical models.

Non-immersive VR

Some suggest this isn’t really VR, and although it is a lower tech, provides a more accessible (cost and ease of use) method of providing an interactive environment for clinical educational experiences. Simulations of medical procedures or clinical scenarios (which can be standardised to current protocols) on a computer can be interacted with using a keyboard or mouse. Some applications incorporate gamification which can enhance engagement.

How we are going to trial VR in our programme

I co-ordinate the Clinical Perfusion Science programme at Bristol, where our students are training to be perfusionists, the professionals who operate the heart-lung bypass machine during cardiac surgery. Alongside teaching and learning of relevant theory they hone their practical clinical skills on the job, based in hospitals throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland, becoming independent practitioners over a period of about 2 years.

While in Bristol they do some low-fidelity practicals, and some simulations (situations that replicate real-life clinical perfusion scenarios using a high-fidelity ‘beating heart’ manikin and cardiopulmonary bypass pump followed by feedback and debriefing). There is no doubt that simulation is an essential and effective part of clinical education and it’s always our students’ favourite part of their study blocks. They really value the freedom to practice with their peers and ask questions in a safe environment, but there simply isn’t enough time, space, or resources to fit in as much as we or they would like.

While VR cannot substitute for in person simulations and certainly not the real clinical experience of a multidisciplinary potentially high stress environment of a cardiac surgery operating theatre, we want another way to bring in more clinically relevant and practical teaching to their education. Ideally it would allow standardised and repeatable, with everyone able to have a go multiple times, safe, controlled, flexible, scalable learning at a distance. Clinical experiences could be shared between our students in hospitals across the world.

Due to the accessibility and ease of use of non-immersive VR, we have chosen to trial this type of VR to meet some of our training objectives using the VirCPB system, a gamified online cardiopulmonary bypass training program. VirCPB is relatively easy to set up, affordable, and it doesn’t require the students to have anything more than a laptop to access a virtual cardiac theatre via a link.

We will use it as a formative learning tool, an adjunct to our in-person simulation sessions. Practice makes perfect and students can engage multiple times, flexibly, autonomously as well as collaboratively. It will be combined with feedback and debriefing to develop technical and non-technical skills. We and the students can monitor their performance and improvement. We hope it will provide a standardised and objective way to potentially assess competency.

We are going to start with a product trial to evaluate the benefits of VR in a study led by Jody Stafford, Honorary Lecturer, Bristol Medical School. We believe that students will benefit from this experience and hope we can incorporate it into our programme more permanently – watch this space!

Read more:

If this blog has sparked your interest, here are a couple of examples of papers about VR techniques in medicine:

Current and Future Applications of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality in Cardiothoracic Surgery – The Annals of Thoracic Surgery (annalsthoracicsurgery.org)

Virtual Reality: The Future of Invasive Procedure Training? – Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia (jcvaonline.com)

Using Virtual Reality Simulation Environments to Assess Competence for Emergency Medicine Learners – McGrath – 2018 – Academic Emergency Medicine – Wiley Online Library

Conference Report: AMEE 2023 Conference 26-30th August 2023, Glasgow UK

Posted on by sarah.allsop

“Inclusive Learning Environments to Transform the Future”

In our third report from this year’s conference season, Dr Carys Gilbert reports on the International Association for Health Professions Education conference held recently in Glasgow, UK.

Natalie Eraifej, Gloriana Suri, Carys Gilbert at AMEE 2023

The AMEE 2023 conference took place this year at the Scottish Events campus in Glasgow. Medical educators from all over the world joined together, with the main theme centred around ‘Inclusive Learning Environments to Transform the Future’. From medical education musicals to motivational speaking symposiums and the effects of war on education in countries such as Ukraine and Myanmar, this was an exciting opportunity to gain a global perspective on medical education.

Dr Natalie Eraifej, former CTF reflected:

‘I really enjoyed attending AMEE this year. It was interesting to learn from about the delivery of medical education within differing cultural and political contexts. Especially inspiring was hearing about the current delivery of medical teaching in war torn countries.’

The University of Bristol was well represented with students, former CTFs and senior members of staff presenting and sharing their work.

Dr Joseph Hartland participated in a symposium discussing their work on what it means to have LGBTQ+ identities in health education. They were joined by people from all over the world, from Canada to Thailand providing an interesting perspective on approaches to LGBTQ+ inclusive healthcare across the world.

Former clinical teaching fellows also presented their work. Dr Natalie Eraifej and Dr Carys Gilbert presented on lessons learnt from a near-peer mentor scheme introduced at the Gloucester Academy between year 5 students and Foundation Year One doctors.

Former Clinical Teaching Fellow Dr Mary Claxton presented a poster on work done with Dr Jessica Reyer, Dr Billy Scott and Dr Ian Hunter on the use of virtual reality in simulation which was completed whilst working as teaching fellows in the Taunton Academy.

Year 4 medical student, Gloriana Suri presented her work completed with Dr Dowan Kwan and Dr Ed Luff and Dr Melina Kellerman which evaluated the use of ethnicity descriptors in an MCQ question bank. This prompted discussion within the room on learned biases and unhelpful stereotyping.

Bristol Medical Student Gloriana Suri presenting her work on ethnicity bias in Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)

Gloriana Suri, year four medical student reflected on her conference experience:

‘AMEE 2023 was the first conference I presented at, in the EDI category, with our project being about ethnicity use in MCQ banks and how this can impact learning and stereotyping. It was well received in a welcoming and supportive environment followed-up by great questions and discussion. AMEE was a great place to learn about the current research in medical education and reducing healthcare inequalities which, as a medical student, has been hugely eye-opening and something I’d like to continue being involved with. I was inspired by talks, met people from around the world and feel much more confident with presenting skills too. Overall a great opportunity that I will massively value going forwards.’

To showcase the amazing contributions made by those within the medical school, we have created a Sway which contains information about all the work presented by those associated with Bristol Medical School.* Access the sway via this link: BRMS at AMEE 2023. 

A copy of AMEE 2023 presentation and poster abstracts can be found here.

AMEE 2024 will take place in Basel, Switzerland. This was a fantastic opportunity to meet medical educators from all over the world and I would strongly encourage anyone with an interest in medical education to take the opportunity to submit their work and/or attend.

For more information about joining AMEE visit: www.amee.org/AMEE/Membership/

* We have done our best to ensure that all work presented at this event has been included here, but if you think we have missed yours and you would like it added, please get in touch.

Read Ed Luff’s Conference Report on the July 2023 ASME Conference here

Building Community: Developing as an early-career medical educator + the Developing Medical Educators’ Group (DMEG)

Posted on by sarah.allsop

In this blog, one of our BMERG committee members David Hettle, an honorary senior teaching fellow and specialist registrar (SpR) in infectious diseases and medical microbiology, talks about the winding journey to becoming an educator and how the Academy of Medical Educators Early Career Educator group ‘DMEG’ can support you on this journey.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

The route to becoming a medical educator, it is fair to say, is not clear, linear, or uniform. Indeed, medical educators may come from medicine, education, other healthcare professions, basic science or other backgrounds.1 This diversity brings with it wide variation in perceptions of what being a medical educator is.

The most recent definition available from the Academy of Medical Educators (AoME) is:

“Medical educators and clinical teachers develop, deliver, and manage teaching programmes and engage in scholarship and research into all aspects of teaching, learning and assessment. Within this definition, the daily work of medical education (MedEd) relates to the teaching of students, doctors, physician associates, vets and dentists about all aspects of patient care, the management of health services, the promotion of health and the prevention of disease.” 2

Clearly, this definition covers a vast spectrum. Individually identifying as a medical educator can range from being central to one individual’s professional identity,3 or may be a secondary identity, potentially at odds with another part of training such as clinical or academic progression. Education may also be merely an activity that professionals undertake rather than being a true part of their owned identity.4-5

The process of ‘becoming a medical educator’ has increasingly become a topic of interest as the profession learns how to support the development of educators. However, much research focusses on educators towards the end of their careers, who often view their involvement and roles as having occurred serendipitously, and have taken much of their career to finally identify as an ‘educator’.3,6

But…why does this matter?

Of course, we are all developing as educators day-by-day, but for those who see themselves at the beginning of their medical educator journey, looking forwards trying to see what the career looks like can be a huge challenge. The fear can be that it is an uncertain, meandering path, with opportunities by chance, rather than planning or good intentions.

Despite this, each year large numbers of junior doctors take time out of training and choose to undertake teaching fellowships,7,8 with numbers increasing all the time. Currently between 70-90 teaching fellows are employed across the NHS trust academies paired with the University of Bristol medical school each year. With an ever-increasing pool of potential career educators completing entry-level posts in MedEd, such as clinical teaching fellowships, there is a need for the world of MedEd to promote, drive and enhance the development of these healthcare professional educators.

Several recent publications suggest routes through which supporting the development of educators should happen including: 5,9-10

  • making teaching visible through events and activities which celebrate the significance of educators’ roles
  • creating transparent and replicable MedEd reward and development structures (such as career pathways – both stand-alone and potentially integrated with clinical training)
  • building communities within MedEd offering role-modelling, a sense of connectedness, and a forum for sharing stories, experiences and frustrations

In 2020, AoME launched the Developing Medical Educators’ Group. This is specifically aimed at those junior and early-career educators shaping their futures in the world of medical education – whether they have held formal posts in MedEd or not.

It recognises that early-career educators are often trying to balance their educator identity with their clinical identity, and that their development can be challenging to integrate in clinical settings where teaching is not always valued as highly as clinical service or research. Communities such as DMEG are therefore crucial to this group of educators, as the “future of medical education” across the UK.

Through AoME, early career educators can apply to be recognised as educators through gaining associate or membership status of the Academy.2 Such accreditation can be hugely important to progression in clinical training and in promoting the value in MedEd as a specialty.

DMEG offers a community for early-career educators, encouraging engagement from anyone interested in MedEd, guided by peers and near-peers in the same boat (or very recently in the same boat!), as those navigating the dual world of medical, dental or veterinary training with educational development. Events are offered both through AoME and directly by DMEG including:

  • DMEG debates: a monthly, live online forum debating hot topics in MedEd (most recently ‘What does the rise of AI mean for MedEd?’).
  • Medical EducaTALKS: regular podcasts exploring aspects of MedEd with senior educators.
  • DMEG conference: A yearly event, this year on 4th October – Communities of Practice in Practise – an online conference discovering the work of early-career educators + hosting workshops and keynotes exploring the world of MedEd.

DMEG seeks to raise the profile of developing medical educators, validate and recognise their critical and important role and ensure that facilities and resources exist for training and development of early-stage educators.

From a personal point of view, having recently been a teaching fellow, DMEG offers me a friendly community to support and continue my development. I can share challenges and new ideas and explore what the MedEd world looks like across the UK and beyond, regardless of where I am currently working, or if/when locally there are no networks or collaboratives available.

I would encourage anyone interested in MedEd, and especially those in teaching fellow posts to have a look at DMEG and see what they can offer you as an educator. By being a group for developing healthcare educators, run by developing healthcare educators, they are always open to suggestions!

Whatever your interest and however long you have been involved in MedEd, DMEG invites you to come and explore the DMEG Conference 2023: Communities of practice in practise, on 4th October 2023.

References

  1. Huwendiek S, Mennin S, Dern P, Ben-David MF, van der Vleuten C, Tonshoff B, Nikendei C. Expertise, needs and challenges of medical educators: Results of an international web survey. Med Teach 2010; 32(11): 912-8.
  2. Academy of Medical Educators. Professional Standards for medical, dental and veterinary educators, 4th edition. Cardiff: Academy of Medical Educators.
  3. Hu WCY, Thistlethwaite JE, Weller J, Gallego G, Monteith J, McColl GJ. ‘It was serendipity’: A qualitative study of academic careers in medical education. Med Educ 2015; 49(11): 1124-36.
  4. Sabel E, Archer J; Early Careers Working Group at the Academy of Medical Educators. “Medical education is the ugly duckling of the medical world” and other challenges to medical educators’ identity construction: A qualitative study. Acad Med 2014; 89(11): 1474-80.
  5. Bartle E, Thistlethwaite J. Becoming a medical educator: motivation, socialisation and navigation. BMC Med Educ 2014; 14: 110.
  6. Browne J, Webb K, Bullock A. Making the leap to medical education: A qualitative study of medical educators’ experiences. Med Educ 2018; 52(2): 216-26.
  7. Wilson S, Denison AR, McKenzie H. A survey of clinical teaching fellowships in UK medical schools. Med Educ 2008; 42(2): 170-5.
  8. Edwards LJ, Hettle D, Stocker C. (2023, July 12-14). A review of Entry-Level Medical Education Roles (ELMERs) in the United Kingdom (conference workshop). Association for the Study of Medical Education Annual Societal Meeting 2023, Birmingham, UK.
  9. Van Lankveld T, Schoonenboom J, Kusurkar RA, Volman M, Beishuizen J, Croiset G. Integrating the teaching role into one’s identity: A qualitative study of beginning undergraduate medical teachers. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract 2017; 22(3): 601-22.
  10. Rees E, Guckian J, Fleming S. Fostering excellence in medical education career pathways. Educ Prim Care 2021; 32(2): 66-9.

Read more about other MedEd associations in our BMERG blog Building Community: Networking Opportunities through joining a MedEd association

An ABCDE to Getting Started with Medical Education Research

Posted on by sarah.allsop
Sarah Allsop

In this blog Sarah Allsop, a Senior Lecturer at Bristol Medical School, shares a short 5-point top tip guide to getting started in medical education research.

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

It was great today to be able to extend a warm welcome to the new intake of Clinical Teaching Fellows (CTFs) working across the NHS Trusts linked to the University of Bristol Medical School, and introduce them to the work of BMERG.

CTFs are not only fantastic teachers and innovators, but also undertake some amazing medical education research projects. Bristol’s recent posters and oral presentations at both AoME and ASME is testament to this, with AMEE still to come at the end of August.

For new CTFs, and in fact anyone starting out undertaking research projects in education, this may be a new task and one which can seem quite daunting. Developing skills in educational research is a journey.

Here is a short 5-point ABCDE guide of top tips for getting started in Education Research – a place to start when you are not sure where to start.

A is for Aim: What are you trying to achieve? What problem are you trying to solve? What is the VALUE of your project? All research projects should start with an aim. Having a clear aim will then help to guide your next steps, study design and methods.

B is for Blueprint: How are you going to blueprint / plan your study? What research paradigm will you use? How will you use educational THEORY to aid the design of your project? What methodology aligns with your research question(s)? What do you need to prepare for your ethical review? Planning your project carefully and considering the alignment of the different elements of your study will ultimately lead to a better quality research project.

C is for Collaborate: Can you work collaboratively to build a stronger, more powerful project? Are there already projects in motion that you can join or build on? How can you work and support each other better? What interdisciplinary angles might be possible? We are stronger together. Talk to your peers and seniors about research projects. You may have ideas of your own that you wish to progress and that is fine, but if these align with the ideas of others, or you can build on previous studies, or try innovations across multiple sites or cohorts, this will improve the POWER and transferability of your work.

D is for Disseminate: How would you like to present or publish your work? Do you want to attend an international medical education or discipline specific conference or publish in a peer-reviewed journal? Would you like to be able to showcase your work across the wider local medical school community? One of the key principle aims of all research is to further knowledge and this means that we need to share our findings. Think about your REACH and influence – where, when and how you might like to share your educational research project results.

E is for Endpoint: What is the potential IMPACT of your study? Who might benefit from learning about your results? What are your personal goals? It may sound counter-intuitive to think about the end-point at the start of your journey, but this will help you to plan and develop a timeline. You will always have finite time to work on a particular project and so understanding your goals and being mindful about what is possible will help you to create the deadlines you need to keep your project on track.

Over the coming months BMERG will be sharing more top tips on undertaking educational research, as well as offering events such as journal clubs, writing groups and more. Subscribe to the blog to get all the latest BMERG news direct to your inbox.

Read more about Bristol conference work this summer at AoME 2023 and ASME 2023

BMERG News: Bristol Clinical Teaching Fellows based at Gloucester Academy win the ASME oral TEL SIG ASM Communications Prize 2023

Posted on by sarah.allsop

BMERG is really pleased and proud to share that Bristol’s Alice Middleton, Carys Gilbert, Philippa Dodd & Isabel Rimmer, from our Gloucester Academy at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust have been awarded the Technology Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group Annual Scholarship Meeting Oral Presentation Prize for their presentation,

“Low-Tech, High-Yield; the utility of virtual patients using simple presentation software“

A massive congratulations to the team on their presentation and work. You can read their winning abstract below and read more at: www.asme.org.uk/awards/tel-asm-prize-2023/#winners

TEL-AS-COMMS-PRIZE-2023-ORAL-WINNER

Read Ed Luffs Blog and Report on the ASME Scholarship Meeting here.

Conference Report: ASME Annual Scholarship Meeting 12-14th July 2023, Birmingham UK

Posted on by sarah.allsop

“Developing a Diverse Workforce“

Continuing our conference report theme, Dr Ed Luff reflects on the Association for the Study of Medical Education Conference recently held in Birmingham, UK.

The Eastside Rooms Conference Centre, Birmingham UK

The 12th-14th of July brought the return of the Annual Scholarship Meeting (ASM) of the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME), which took place at the Eastside Rooms conference centre in Birmingham. The three-day programme of events saw representation from a wide range of attendees from Bristol Medical School and the Academies, presenting work at a national-level medical education conference. Presenters came from all areas within the school, from professors and lecturers to medical students and clinical teaching fellows (CTFs) to MSc and PhD students, showcasing the wide range of work conducted around medical education within Bristol Medical School.

Once again, this year Bristol was extremely well represented at the conference, with contributions comprising 2 workshops, 15 oral presentations and 29 poster presentations, which exceeded the high bar set at last year’s conference. Huge congratulations to all those who were involved in presenting, authoring, and contributing to the work that was presented, it really highlights the excellent and high-quality work that is being conducted both locally and regionally. Work was presented by academics from within the medical school, those based at academies around the region, including both North and South Bristol, Bath, Gloucester & Cheltenham, and Swindon, as well as current undergraduate medical students and doctors completing their MSc in Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals (TLHP) and PhD.

The range of topics and areas of the curriculum covered by presenters from Bristol ranged from paediatrics to palliative care, professionalism to research paradigms, interprofessional learning and simulations on Boeing 747’s, transgender and non-binary healthcare, and gamification of sexual health. Many presentations highlighted collaboration both within the medical school, across different academies and hospital sites, as well as with outside organisations and other institutions and healthcare professionals.

This year also saw the inclusion of a new presentation format at the conference, the ‘What’s Your Point?’ sessions, where presenters were invited to start a conversation and present on a topic of interest or debate. We had a thought-provoking oral presentation on the future of medical educators, and poster presentations on classical cases/ typical presentations, promoting interprofessional education, a professionalism reporting system and engagement with teaching innovations.

ASME as a conference provides a wonderfully welcoming and inclusive environment to inspire, engage and network. It is friendly and accessible, with sessions covering the full spectrum of medical education, from admissions and widening access, through undergraduate, foundation years, and postgraduate training. There really is something for everyone and the wide range of parallel ‘pre-conference’ and ‘intra-conference’ sessions, symposia and workshops provide an opportunity for attendees to build skills and develop in areas of personal interest.

Dr Alice Middleton, CTF co-lead, based at Gloucester Academy, reflected on her experiences from the conference:

“I presented about using virtual patients to teach clinical reasoning, and was encouraged by queries and enthusiasm about the project from members of the Technology Enhanced Learning ‘TEL’ special interest group of ASME – I have joined them! I also attended the TASME prize presentation session and talked to one of the presenters after the session, we have since been emailing about potentially collaborating on a project about teaching clinical reasoning which is exciting; it was a great opportunity to link up and learn from people doing similar-but-different things in other medical schools in the UK.”

Dr Sam Chumbley, a CTF based at South Bristol Academy commented:

“This was my first ever conference, and who knew they could be so fun?! I met so many like-minded people, and everyone commented on how approachable everyone is it ASME. You can be asking a presenter a question after their talk, and then sharing a meal with them later that day. The talks were fascinating, with a heavy focus on EDI topics this year, which has empowered me to speak up when seeing colleagues or patients being discriminated. Other talks focused on topics like innovation in education, which is always exciting to hear about, and has made me less terrified of the advent of AI in education. Ultimately, ASME has set the bar very high for future conferences I will attend!”

To showcase the amazing contributions made by those within the medical school, we have created a Sway which contains information about all the work presented by those associated with Bristol Medical School.* You can view summaries of the two workshops, copies of the abstracts for the oral and poster presentations and electronic versions of all the posters too. Access the sway via this link: BRMS at ASME 2023. A collated Bristol abstracts booklet can be viewed here:

ASME-BRMS-Abstract-Booklet-2023-1

The full ASME 2023 conference brochure can be downloaded here: ASME 2023 brochure. The conference brochure contains detailed information on keynote speakers, pre and intra-conference sessions including symposia and pop-up events, parallel sessions and oral presentations. The abstracts book can be downloaded here: ASME 2023 Abstracts book. The abstracts book contains details of all abstracts included at the ASM 2023. Each individual abstract has its own page including information on the authors and presenters. This includes submissions for e-Posters, oral presentations, relevant awards, and What’s Your Point? sessions. For information about joining ASME visit: www.asme.org.uk/membership/.  

Next year’s ASM will be held in Warwick, from the 10th-12th of July 2024, with the theme ‘Maximising Potential’. We hope that next year will bring further success for Bristol Medical School at ASME. We are also looking forward to the AMEE conference, which this year is being held in Glasgow from the 26th to the 30th of August. The best of luck to everyone who is presenting.

* We have done our best to ensure that all work presented at this event has been included here, but if you think we have missed yours and you would like it added, please get in touch.

Read Sarah Allsop’s Conference report on the June 2023 AOME-INHWE Conference here

Hot Topics: Medical Education Research – Why, How, Why and What

Posted on by sarah.allsop

In the next of our hot topic blogs, Dr Fiona Holmes from our BMERG committee talks about what actually defines a ‘Hot topic’ in Medical Education, and the importance of thinking about why and how we find out about what’s new and upcoming in our discipline.

 

Photo by Guido Jansen on Unsplash

While I was thinking about what to discuss, I realised that what I think is a hot topic might be just lukewarm to other people. We are all driven by different interests, experiences, and priorities.

In the hope of finding relevant and interesting subjects I started by looking into why a topic is hot, how they are identified and why this is important (which links back to why a topic is hot). This led me to what main areas of medical education are currently widely considered to be hot, and we look forward to exploring some of these in more depth in future hot topic blogs.

Why are topics considered ‘hot’?

Hot topics are influenced by various social and cultural contexts and needs, and may be hot because they are:

  • Relevant
  • Controversial
  • Timely
  • Impactful
  • Novel

Within medical education, and by extension pedagogical research in this field, there are a wide range of factors that have been identified to contribute to hotness:

  • Advancements in knowledge and technology: It has been estimated that new medical information doubles every 73 days. What and how to teach and the evaluation of learning needs to keep pace with these developments. How to prepare students to deal with such rapid developments and to be life-long learners is also a priority. Advances in technology for teaching and learning as well as the practice of medicine are transforming healthcare and its education. Adapting education to these technological changes will ensure future healthcare professionals are prepared to utilise these tools effectively.

  • Patient-centred care: With ever-changing healthcare needs and demographics, education research is needed to address the teaching of emerging health concerns, population health management, and the needs of diverse patient populations. This is twinned with a need for more consideration of patients’ values, preferences, and needs when making healthcare decisions therefore effective education in communication skills, empathy, cultural competence, and shared decision-making.

  • Interprofessional collaboration: Effective co-training of different healthcare professionals to foster teamwork skills to prepare students for collaborative healthcare environments.

  • Accreditation, regulation, stakeholder input: Accreditation bodies and regulatory agencies may revise guidelines to promote quality, safety, and innovation in medical education, prompting educational institutions to adapt their curricula accordingly. Such changes can drive research in this area. Likewise, public expectations, patient advocacy, and input from stakeholders (e.g., healthcare providers, patients, policymakers) play a role in shaping medical education and its research. These can influence curriculum content, teaching methods, and the overall educational experience.

  • Global health and environmental challenges: Global health issues, such as pandemics, emerging infectious diseases, health disparities, as well as environmental contexts highlight the need for a globally competent healthcare workforce. Medical education is addressing these challenges by incorporating global health content, cross-cultural training, and exposure to international healthcare systems.

Then of course there is medical education research itself and the innovation and design that comes with sharing evidence-based practice. This contributes to the evolution of medical education by identifying effective teaching methods, assessment tools, and strategies for continued professional development and aiming to ensure that innovation is beneficial.

How do hot topics get identified and become ‘hot’?

You may initially think that hot topics are simply those that are most prevalent in the current medical education journals, and this may well be true. Most things move in cycles and there are often trends for the types of issues that we see and trends in the solutions implemented. But, when you think about it, how do we find out what is prevalent or ‘trending’ at any given time?

There are number of ways to identify recurring themes, emerging topics and changes in research focus and involve both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and there is some overlap in the methods used. Examples include:

  • Literature review:  The systematic search, selection, and evaluation of relevant studies.
  • Bibliometric analysis: Analysis of publication and citation patterns over time to provide insight into the volume of research, popular topics, influential authors, and collaborations within the field.
  • Content analysis: Systematically categorise and analyse the content of research articles, conference proceedings to identify patterns and trends in research articles, social media discussions and online forums.
  • Surveys/questionnaires: Analysis of perceptions and attitudes of educational practices and emerging trends.
  • Interviews/focus groups: In-depth exploration of topics and contextual information.

Let’s look at an example:

Ji et al (2018) used social network analysis to identify changing trends in medical education and interpreted their findings to suggest 5 eras of medical education:

Figure. Ji et al Eras of medical education research

They determined that “during the 53-year period studied, medical education research has been subdivided and has expanded, improved, and changed along with shifts in society’s needs.” By analysing the trends they determined that medical education is forming a sense of the ‘voluntary order’ within the field and establishing legitimacy and originality. (Ji et al (2018) Research topics and trends in medical education by social network analysis | BMC Medical Education | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)).

So, why do we need to know about hot topics?

Hot topic research is important to ensure that medical education remains dynamic, responsive, and aligned with the evolving demands of the healthcare field and the needs of the learner. It supports the continuous improvement of medical education, leading to better-prepared healthcare professionals and ultimately improved patient outcomes.

Identifying hot topics helps time-limited researchers and educators stay informed about the latest trends, innovations, and challenges in medical knowledge, education and assessment practices to enhance teaching and learning methods, and to focus efforts on areas that require attention. This can then inform curriculum development and promote evidence-based practices.

Sharing hot topic research also helps to foster collaboration and networking among those with shared interests, leading to the exchange of ideas and development of research networks. As this grows, this helps institutions and funders prioritise and allocate resources by identifying areas of high research interest and impact. This is particularly important in identifying areas of medical education that are under-researched or require further attention.

What is hot right now?

Here are 8 of the hottest topics currently shaping medical education research in 2023:

  • Technology in education: Virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Digital tools to engage with, filter and disseminate information that are interactive, efficient, and individualised.

  • Experiential and simulation-based learning: Through VR and AR, standardised patients, manikins, clinical scenarios to allow students to practice complex procedures and decision-making in a safe and controlled environment, improving their skills, confidence and safety.

  • Interdisciplinary education and team-based learning: Students from various healthcare disciplines learn about, from and with each other collaboratively. Case-based discussions and interprofessional simulations and debriefing, allow students to develop the skills needed to function in teams. It improves patient outcomes and enhances healthcare delivery and professional satisfaction by encouraging mutual respect, understanding, and effective communication.

  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Recruitment and retention of students from diverse backgrounds so that the healthcare profession better represents the patient population. Educating students in culturally appropriate care practices and social determinants of health. Learning environments to promote respect for diverse perspectives and equality of opportunities.

  • Competency-based education: Teaching and assessing ability to perform specific tasks and skills rather than relying solely on traditional exams to ensure proficiency in essential competencies required for clinical practice.

  • Biopsychosocial education: Effective teaching and learning to provide a more holistic, ethical and comprehensive approach to patient case.

  • Wellness and resilience: Self-care, stress management, and mental health support approaches such as mindfulness and peer support networks. Curriculum reform, including flexible scheduling, reducing workload and modifying assessment practices to create a healthier learning environment and promote a culture of empathy and compassion in healthcare.

  • Data-driven and evidence-based medicine: Education in critical appraisal of biomedical literature, interpret research findings, and apply evidence-based practices in clinical decision-making.

    • Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

    So, I hope it is interesting to consider why we should know the hot topics for research and identify topics that are warming up so that we can strive towards thoroughness in medical education research. We look forward to sharing more hot topics through the BMERG blog.

    “Medical education is not just a program for building knowledge and skills in its recipients… it is also an experience which creates attitudes and expectations.” Abraham Flexner

    You can also check out Grace’s recent hot topic blog on Reflexive Thematic Analysis here

    Do you have a hot topic that you would like to write about for BMERG? Get in touch at brms-bmerg@bristol.ac.uk

Training: Bristol Medical School Short Course Programme 2023/24

Posted on by sarah.allsop

If you are a health sciences education researcher and are looking for training in research methods, check out the new programme from Bristol Medical School Short Courses.

Photo by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash

Short courses are designed for researchers and healthcare practitioners and cover a range of topics on research methodology, design and analysis in health sciences. From statistics to qualitative methods, data visualisations, or writing up journal papers, there is something to support your research journey.

Bookings will be available from midday on 17th October.

Find out more on the short course website or explore the chart of courses available month-by-month below.

Short-Course-Programme-Chart-2023-2024Download

Conference Report: AOME – INHWE Joint Conference 2023, Cardiff 27-29 June 2023

Posted on by sarah.allsop
Sarah Allsop

“Learning together for clinical excellence”

It’s conference season and Sarah Allsop reflects on the AOME-INHWE conference held recently at Cardiff University.

Centre for Student Life, University of Cardiff

The joint conference between the Academy of Medical Educators (AOME) and the International Network for Health Workforce Education (INHWE) was held last week in the beautiful city of Cardiff and hosted by Cardiff University in the Centre for Student Life.

Over the three days, the presentations and workshops spanned a huge diversity of topics, but centred around the values and culture that we need to support excellent patient care through working together. One of the frustrations of conferences is that due to the parallel nature of the scheduling, you can’t always get to everything that you really want to see. The flip side of this, is that you might end up attending something you didn’t expect, which turns out to be really interesting and useful. I love the fact that you always make new connections and learn something new at conferences.

A few of the talks really stood out for me during the conference.

  • The Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services, Eluned Morgan MS, highlighted the importance of including educators in workforce planning to tackle the challenges of healthcare in Wales and across the UK.
  • Professor Josie Fraser, Deputy Vice Chancellor for the Open University, talked about the value and outcomes of using enquiry-based learning, in particular team-based learning in interprofessional learning groups. She highlighted the value in students debating together and understanding each other’s viewpoints better, and learning how to work together, building confidence and respect.
  • Professor Jacky Hayden CBE spoke about the importance of planning for the future, and critical to this is investing time to develop the medical education leaders of tomorrow. Importantly she talked about creating the space to develop these skills. Healthcare education leaders need to drive the quality of standards not only in higher education institutions, but also in the healthcare providers within the NHS. Education leaders have the power to influence culture, and the importance of compassion and trust are hugely important in developing others.

Bristol Medical School was also represented at the conference with both staff and students presenting work including:

  • ‘The lost decades’ a workshop led by BMERGs Dr Sarah Allsop with Professor Colin Macdougall from Warwick Medical School on how to problem solve some of the challenges ahead for medical educators
  • ‘Enhancing Anatomy Teaching Through Peer-Run, Flipped Classroom Sessions’ poster presented by Bristol medical students Mr Adam Mistry and Ms Shraddha Sriraman
  • ‘Inspiring the next generation to innovate in healthcare through a cross-faculty student innovation programme’ presented by Bristol medical student Miss Somto Okoli with students from Cardiff Medical School

Colleagues from our Bristol NHS Academies also presented including:

  • ‘Developing a tailored teaching program to support international medical graduates’ presented by Dr Laura Kyle, Dr Eleanor Pilsworth, Dr Bethan Arnold, Dr Malvika Subramaniam, and Dr Amy Whitworth from Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton
  • ‘Celebrating Trainee Success Drives Learning and Boosts Morale’ – Unanimously positive experience of a departmental teaching session driven by trainees’ case presentations of personal excellence presented by Miss Robyn Brown and Mr Anthony Gould from Great Western Hospital, Swindon

The whole conference was extraordinarily uplifting and a reminder of the huge enthusiasm and energy of the medical education community.

The full programme and abstract book can be viewed at https://www.medicaleducators.org/Learning-Together-for-Clinical-Excellence-2023

I would recommend any aspiring and current educators to consider attending future AOME and INHWE events and looking at the professional standards and support available from these associations.

Find out more about AOME: https://www.medicaleducators.org/Why-join-AoME

Find out more about INHWE: https://inhwe.org/

Acknowledgement: Sarah Allsop (blog author) would like to acknowledge the funding grant awarded by the Bristol Medical School to support her presentation at this conference in June 2023.