Medical education
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Editorial Comment
Medical education, social accountability and patient outcomes.
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Interprofessional education (IPE) is not a recent phenomenon and has been the subject of several World Health Organization reports. Its focus is on health professionals and students learning with, from and about one another to improve collaboration and the quality of patient care. The drivers for IPE include new models of health care delivery in the context of an ageing population and the increasing prevalence of long-term chronic disease, in addition to the patient safety agenda. The delivery of complex health care requires a team-based and collaborative approach, although teamwork and collaborative practice are not necessarily synonymous. The rationale for IPE is that learning together enhances future working together. ⋯ Interprofessional education draws from a number of education, sociology and psychology theories, and these are briefly discussed. The most pressing research questions for the IPE community are defined and the challenges for IPE explored.
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Workplace-based assessment (WPBA) is an increasingly important part of postgraduate medical training and its results may be used as evidence of professional competence. This study evaluates the ability of WPBA to distinguish UK Foundation Programme (FP) doctors with training difficulties and its effectiveness as a surrogate marker for deficiencies in professional competence. ⋯ Analysis of a large dataset of WPBA scores revealed significant associations between training difficulties and lower mean scores on both the mini-CEX and CbD. Models show that using WPBA scores is, however, not a valid way of screening for trainees in difficulty. Workplace-based assessments have value as formative assessments that prompt supervision, feedback and reflection. They should not be relied upon to certify competence and their use for such ends may reduce their effectiveness in training. Their results should be interpreted in the context of multiple other methods of assessment, with the aim of achieving a genuinely holistic and representative assessment of professional competence.
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Globalisation initiatives in medical education are premised on a universal model of medical education. This study was conducted to challenge this premise by empirically examining the impact of culture on the practice of medical education in anaesthesia residency training programmes in Thailand and Canada. ⋯ This study shows that although the scientific and knowledge base of medical education is universal, its enactment may be influenced by culture and context. Globalisation initiatives in medical education must be tempered by recognition of these considerations.