Group run by academics from University of Bristol Medical School with an interest in Medical Education Research. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not of Bristol Medical School or the University.
The mission and aim of the ClinEdR Incubator is to support and promote careers in clinical education research through building a multi-professional community of practice. It extends across all health professions and aims to bring people together to develop their ideas, build collaborations and provide a network of developing experience in the field.
What is Clinical Education Research?
This is one of the most fundamental questions and tends to have a myriad of different definitions and terms including clinical, medical, and healthcare professionals education research to name just a few. Often the word ‘clinical’ can drive the idea that this sort of research must have a direct impact in clinical practice and thus can seem to exclude certain areas of research in education.
The team at the Incubator have tried to broaden this idea, embracing all sorts of different research that can and does have an impact on societal health needs by “enhancing the education, training and development of health and social care practitioners, and the organisations within which they work and learn“. They highlight a number of different areas in which individuals and teams may be undertaking clinical education research such as:
Pedagogical research
Planning and design of educational programmes
Regulation processes
Organisation context of learning, such as learning environments and workforce inclusivity
Learner experience and careers
They also consider that this whilst this type of research may have a direct clinical impact for patients it may achieve impact in other ways such as benefiting clinicians in their training, influencing health and education systems and through challenging and developing standards.
How can the Incubator help those who want to engage in Clinical Education Research?
The incubator is a fantastic place to start regardless of where you are in your ClinEdR journey. It offers a variety of resource and links via it’s website such as:
Building on our previous BMERG Publishing in Medical Education blogs, in this post Dr Sally Dowling talks about what to think about when you write your article.
Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash
In the previous BMERG blog, Writing for publication: getting started, I wrote about getting started on your journal article, and all the important things there are to do before you even begin to write. These include being really clear about what you are writing, who you are writing for (your audience) and the specific requirements of your chosen journal. Some useful guidance on this topic is also available from the publishers Taylor and Francis here ‘How to write and structure a journal article’.
In this blog, I talk about taking the next steps, and moving on to writing your journal article.
Where to start?
Titles, abstracts and keywords are very important in making your article discoverable through database and other searches – and ultimately, in ensuring that your work reaches its intended audience. Writing the title and abstract for your article may be something you write/finalise near the end of the process or you may, like me, like to start with this.
Titles
Titles serve a number of purposes – they need to clearly and concisely articulate what the article is about in order to grab attention and lead to someone reading the whole article. A title which is funny or focused on a pun may be enjoyable to write, but may not do the job so well as one which is a clear description. Generally titles should be short – some journals specify word length, often 12 or 14 words. Some like to see the methodology in the title, others are not specific – check the author guidance and review recent publications to check what you need to do for the submission you are planning. Avoid unnecessary words and make sure that key information about why readers should be interested is included.
Abstracts
Abstracts are also very important. Sometimes, when searching databases, potential readers may search using the ‘title and abstract only’ function. Read the author guidelines for your chosen journal to check word allowance (most are quite strict about this) and whether or not you need to structure your abstract using headings. If you are not sure have a look at articles already published in the journal.
Keywords
Some journals will ask you to select keywords from drop-down lists, others will allow you to add your own – some will do both. Make sure that keywords for your article are repeated both in title and abstract (some maybe only once, some repeated throughout). Again, this will maximise discoverability. Some more useful information, from publisher PLOS, about writing titles and abstracts can be found here, ‘How to Write a Great Title’.
Writing the main body of your article – Top tips
Getting down to actually writing your article can be both exciting and daunting. These are some tips based on my experience:
Stay organised: If you will be doing this with others, be clear with each other about who is doing what – will one person write the first draft and then others edit? Or will you each write a section and then one person edit for consistency later?
Be clear about authorship: the journal will usually ask you to confirm each person’s contribution. Read more about the ethics of authorship from the Commission of Publication Ethics (COPE).
Plan carefully before you start writing: How many words are you allowed by your chosen journal? Does this include references? Plan your content to fit with these requirements and try and stick to the word count as much as you can whilst writing – it’s much harder to edit down when you are very many words over!
Consider your headings: Does your chosen journal want you to stick to pre-determined headings? Can you add your own sub-headings? Think about what is needed under each heading and plan what you will include.
Know your referencing style: What is the referencing style used by the journal? If you are unfamiliar with it make sure you follow it exactly. Using a referencing manager will help but you will still need to check carefully.
Consider your writing style: Write clearly and concisely, include explanations of terms if you think they are needed. Think about your audience – if they are international will they understand the context you are writing about? Is the journal readership a specialist or a generalist one? How does this affect what you say – and how you say it?
Keep a checklist of key information: Identify important details to include and make sure that you do! These can include ethical approval numbers, information on recruitment and participants, any limitations on what you did, and so on.
Show your decision making: Your reader needs to clearly understand the background and context to your work and your motivation for undertaking the study. They need to know about the methods you chose and why you chose them. Data collection should be clearly explained and results outlined (the format for these will depend on the methodology of your paper). A discussion should relate your findings to what was already known about the issue, highlighting and discussing what you found in relation to this
Thinking about structure
It might be helpful to think of the earlier parts of the paper, like the introduction and background, as an inverted triangle or funnel – starting out broad, setting the scene and context before narrowing down to your specific focus. The conclusion is the opposite:
Finishing your article
When you have finished your article and you (and co-authors are happy with it), there are still a number of cross-checks to move your manuscript towards submission:
Double check the journal’s requirements – do you need a separate title page?
Do you need to anonymise all references to authors in the main text (including to previous publications)?
Have you followed all style and formatting instructions (have they asked for a specific font, or do you need to add line numbers, for example)?
Finally, write a brief letter to the editor, explaining why your article is a good fit for the journal and why they might be interested in publishing it. Now you are ready to submit! More on this next time.
More about the blog author
Sally is a Lecturer at Bristol Medical School, working both for the Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals programme and the MSc Reproduction and Development (Co-Director). She also runs a series of writing for publication workshops for the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol and helps to facilitate the BMERG ‘Shut Up and Write’ sessions. Sally has experience of publishing journal articles as sole author and with others, publishing with students and writing book chapters. She has co-edited one book and is currently co-authoring a second. She has acted as a peer-reviewer for many submitted papers and worked as an Editorial Team member for two journals.
Watch out for Sally’s next blog in the new year on how to navigate the process of submission, including responding to reviews.
IN PERSON EVENT Friends House, London Postgraduate Researcher Exchange Sessions: Call for abstracts Deadline for submission Friday 29th September 2023 at 5pm
ASME’s Education Research Committee (ERC) are very keen to support and encourage our excellent early career HPE research community to share their ongoing work. With this in mind, we are inviting those who are undertaking postgraduate research studies, at any stage, (e.g. PhD, Professional Doctorate, MD, MRes) to submit an abstract to present their work in progress.
The abstract that you submit should focus on the theme of the conference “Alignment matters: from conception to communication”, demonstrating how you have integrated and aligned, or plan to integrate and align your choices of theory, research philosophy, and if relevant to stage, methodology and methods (or proposed methodology and methods).
Your abstract should be no more than 300 words long and finish with a question or topic that you would like to discuss with the audience (who will consist of fellow HPE researchers with a range of experiences).
Once all abstracts have been received we will then shortlist 6 presenters for our Postgraduate Researcher Exchange Sessions, which will form part of RME (those not selected will be given the option to present a poster at RME). The emphasis of these sessions is on discussion and ideas exchange; therefore, you will have 7 minutes for your presentation and 13 minutes will be given over to discussion.
Please send your abstract(s) submission to ERC-Events@asme.org.uk by Friday 29th September 2023 at 5pm. You will receive notification of whether you have been selected for presentation or poster by Wednesday 11th October, 2023.
Submissions are final on receipt, no amendments will be permitted after submission.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
This blog is written for BMERG by one of our committee members Dr Grace Pearson. Grace is Bristol Medical School graduate and a current Clinical Research Fellow in Population Health Sciences. Her research interests are in undergraduate medical education, specifically curriculum development and evaluation and geriatrics education.
Grace shares her experience and tips after attending a workshop hosted by BMERG and the School of Policy Studies on ‘Reflexive Thematic Analysis’ from the expert Qualitative researcher, Professor Virginia Braun from the University of Auckland.
At medical school, future doctors are taught to detect patterns in history and examination to reach a diagnosis. Moving into medical research, this scientific pattern-recognition continues in quantitative data analysis and interpretation. As a result, approaching mixed methods studies or pure qualitative research can be daunting for those of us in medical and other scientific fields – it certainly was for me.
There are several core aspects of qualitative data analysis that I’ve never truly got to grips with, despite attending multiple training courses… Therefore, getting the chance to learn directly from a world-leading expert was an opportunity not to be missed.
I went into this workshop wanting to learn how to analyse or ‘code’ my data and develop my themes. I came away with a much wider appreciation of the importance of exploring context, embracing subjectivity, finding latent meaning, and conceptualising what Prof Braun called ‘galaxy’ themes rather than ‘buckets’. Let me explain a bit more.
When we first look at qualitative data during analysis, certain things can jump out at us as topics. We may think these may start to look like our themes, but if we are not careful, they can end up looking like our original questions and, because everything we connect to a particular topic ends up together ‘in a bucket’ so to speak, may have lots of conflicting ideas within them.
Conversely, true themes are more like a galaxy with a clear core, a ‘central organizing concept’ holding together all the ideas which although may be different, just like stars and planets are in a galaxy, they remain inherently linked.
Here are my 5 key learning points from Professor Braun’s fantastic reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) workshop, which I hope might help others to approach their own qualitative data analysis in a reassuringly robust way:
Scientifically Descriptive vs Artfully Interpretive analysis: Descriptive describes and summarises the data in an ‘experiential’ or ‘realist’ manner. Interpretive tells a story, locating the data within a wider context and presents an argument in a ‘critical’ or ‘constructionist’ way. Approaches to thematic analysis (TA), range from ‘scientifically descriptive’ deductive methods such as coding reliability, to ‘artfully interpretive’ inductive methods such as reflexive TA.
Small q vs Big Q: Descriptive analysis suits ‘Small q’ research questions that seek to explore or describe peoples’ experiences, understandings, or perceptions – their ‘individual reality’. Interpretive analysis suits ‘Big Q’ research questions that seek to explore the ‘wider context’, for instance influencing factors, representations, and constructions.
Context and Subjectivity: Analysis occurs in the intersecting space between the researcher(s), the data, and the research question. Subjectivity is present in all 3, as all are influenced by sociocultural, disciplinary, and scholarly context – as a result, analysis is situated in context, which must be clearly communicated.
Coding: codes are ‘units of analytic interest’, the smallest unit of analysis capturing a single analytic idea or facet. These can be semantic (explicit) or latent (implicit) – descriptive analysis generally uses more semantic codes, whilst interpretive analysis uses both. Codes are not ontologically ‘real’, they exist only for the researcher(s) to foster engagement with the data – they need to capture the meaning of the data along with the researchers’ interpretation, orientated towards answering the research question.
Themes: a theme is a construction that captures shared or repeated meaning in the data around a ‘central organising concept’. Themes are conceptual, therefore semantic-level data may seem disparate, but it is unified by latent meaning representing diverse manifestations of the core concept (like a galaxy). Themes sit in the analytic narrative – they must tell a story of how the data is meaningful and answers the research question.
Some examples of recommended resources for getting started using reflexive thematic analysis
Braun, V, & Clarke, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. SAGE.
Braun, V, & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE.
Braun, V, & Clarke, V. (2021). Can I use TA? Should I use TA? Should I not use TA? Comparing reflexive thematic analysis and other pattern-based qualitative analytic approaches. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 21(1), 37-47. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12360
Braun, V, & Clarke, V. (2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328-352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1769238
Virginia “Ginny” Braun is a New Zealand psychology academic specialising critical psychology of health and gender. She is internationally recognised for expertise in qualitative methodologies, and particularly the now widely utilised method of (reflexive) thematic analysis – developed in collaboration with Victoria Clarke (UWE).
This blog is kindly written for BMERG by one of our amazing subject librarians, Richard Kielb. Richard takes us through some top tips around searching databases whilst undertaking your research, and some tips for breaking down the process.
When it comes to research, different search strategies are needed dependent on the nature and context of your work. Sometimes you may just need a book or a few relevant articles on a subject, and in this situation a quick search of your local library catalogue can often be sufficient. For more detailed research, it is likely to be more important to be able to carry out a comprehensive review of the literature, and this will usually require an advanced search using bibliographic databases.
So what is a bibliographic database? A database will allow you to search across very large numbers of academic sources simultaneously. Most of these sources will be academic journals, but some databases will include book chapters, conference proceedings, systematic reviews etc.
Different subjects will be supported by particular databases, so it will be important to identify the ones that are most relevant for you. Medical education would be a good example of a topic which would cross over more than one subject, so you would need to consider searching in databases recommended for both Medicine and Education as well as others with a multi-disciplinary focus.
Which databases you choose to use will depend very much on the topic you are researching and also what resources you have access to as an individual or a member of an institution. Many databases are not free to access and can be extremely expensive, but they are often provided by library services in organisations such as Universities and in the NHS.
Although the various databases have search interfaces that look quite different, the basic principles listed below will generally apply to all of them. Some of the functionality and ‘wildcard’ symbols etc might be slightly different, but there are usually help pages and guides available that will help indicate how it all works.
There are four basic stages to the database searching process:
Break your question down to its main concepts
Decide on the relevant search terms
Combine your search terms
Review your results
Breaking your question down to its main concepts
For clinical questions you may have come across the PICO formula to identify your concepts, and you can consider doing something similar for your medical-education topic. The social science framework called SPICE can be useful:
S – Setting Where does the research happen? P – Population Who is your research focused on? Is your population defined by age, gender, ethnicity etc? I – Intervention What are you investigating? Is it the use of technology or participation in a particular educational programme? C – Comparator Are you comparing anything with your main intervention? E – Evaluation Appraising the value, validity, or effectiveness of the intervention.
As with PICO you do not necessarily need to have a concept for every SPICE element.
Decide on the relevant search terms
Next you will need to consider what terms to search in relation to all of the different concepts. Include likely variations in terms in order to carry out a comprehensive review and to avoid missing any papers which are relevant to your topic. It will be important to factor in all synonyms, related terminology and any variations in spelling (particularly UK/US).
Keyword searching, also known as free-text searching, is where you will look for exact matches for your search terms in the titles and abstracts of journal articles. It is also useful to include searches in any controlled vocabulary offered by your chosen database, for example resources like Medline, ERIC and Cinahl offer ‘Subject Headings’, which make it easier to locate papers on a specific subject. Each article listed in the database is assigned a number of Subject Headings which represent what topics it covers. The advantage of this is that all of the articles on the same subject will be given the same subject heading, independent of the terminology used by the individual authors.
Combine your search terms
The Boolean search operators (OR, AND, NOT) can be used to combine your searches effectively.
Use OR to combine searches about the same concept – synonyms, related terms, variant spellings (e.g. Vitamin C OR ascorbic acid). This will broaden your search.
Use AND to combine searches about different concepts (e.g. caffeine AND asthma). This will narrow your search.
Use NOT to exclude terms from your search. This can be useful if you are retrieving some irrelevant content but use an element of caution as this can also remove useful material that may have mentioned the excluded term.
Review your results
Critically appraise your results (are they relevant to your research topic?) and decide if you need to make any changes to your search strategy. When you have run your search, you will often find that you either have more or fewer results than you were expecting.
Too many? Look for ways to make your search more specific. Can you add concepts? Are there valid ways to limit your results (publication date range, age group, language etc)?
Too few? Look for ways to make your search more general. Are there any terms that could be removed? Would broader search terms be useful?
Setting ‘limits’ can also be helpful as many of the databases will provide a series of in-built limits and filters, so it can be useful to investigate the options available.
Remember that your local Librarian will be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about using bibliographic databases and finding information more generally! At the University of Bristol you can find your subject specific librarian at: www.bris.ac.uk/library/subject-support/
This publication call is one for all the Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary and Biological Sciences students out there who are looking to publish their work.
INSPIRE posters about publication submission calls 2023
The Inspire Student Research Journal is written, peer reviewed and edited by students. The journal is a great opportunity to experience science publishing and have your name in print. This year’s editorial team are looking for Med, Vet, Dentistry and Biomedical articles for the 2023 issues. These could be: research papers from your course; opinion pieces; reviews; features on intercalation, events or electives; cover art; creative writing and more…
They are also creating a special edition on One Health – the concept of human, animal and planetary health being interlinked. It is up to you how to interpret the theme, for example whether it’s the impact of single use plastics or antibiotic resistance and factory farming to cross species infectious diseases or food system failures.
Deadline for the Autumn issue: 12 June
Deadline for the One Health special: 11 September
If you are a Medicine, Veterinary or Dentistry student and would like to act as a peer reviewer then please send us your details.
Welcome to the blog of the University of Bristol Medical Education Research Group, from Bristol Medical School.
This Group aims to bring together all staff who have an interest in Medical Education Research both here at Bristol Medical School and beyond. We hope this group will foster a great sense of collaboration between all those involved in the education of healthcare professionals, and how they might evaluate, research and share their innovate work.
BMERG was conceptualised by our School Education Director, Annie Noble Denny to bring together all of the fantastic work at Bristol Medical School around a wide variety of Medical Education research topics. BMERG is co-led by Sarah Allsop and Steve Jennings. Both are happy to be contacted about the work of the group at brms-bmerg@bristol.ac.uk.
Our research spans a wide variety of project themes across both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education delivery including curriculum design and innovation, assessment and evaluation, digital learning environment, equality, diversity and inclusion, student wellbeing and supporting educators.
Over the course of the next year, BMERG will be launching a series of workshops and guidance around topics such as publishing, collaborating, and building your profile as an education researcher.
You can subscribe to our blog at the side of this page. More blogs, news and events coming soon.
