CHES Faculty provide routine consultation to anyone interested in embarking on a career or a research project in health professions education. If you would like to speak with someone about particular ideas you have, you can reach out to any of the People listed on our website – each will try to help connect you with the right individuals and the right Activities to meet your needs. Keep in mind that many of these activities are (or can be) virtual, so living outside of Vancouver and/or working at a distributed site should not be a barrier to engagement.”
For a quick answer to some frequently asked questions, please read further.
HPE differs in many ways from other fields of research. Among these is the idea that we cannot assume demonstrations of effectiveness (or lack thereof) to generalize in the way expected of drug trials because countless factors are likely to influence the outcome achieved by any particular “administration” of an educational strategy. As such, education scholars differentiate between evaluation (data collected for the sake of testing the effectiveness of a particular implementation) and research (data collected for the sake of advancing understanding about the what, when, how or why of educationally relevant phenomena). Both are important, but what you focus on will have various implications.
For an elaborated explanation, see (a) Regehr’s distinction between “Did it work?” and “Why did it work?” studies; (b) Cook, Bordage and Schmidt’s distinction between description/justification and clarification research; and (c) Ellaway et al.’s empirical demonstration of why the distinction between evaluation and research is important.
To understand why research in the field of HPE places emphasis on data collection that broadens one’s thinking, see (a) Bordage’s explanation of conceptual frameworks, (b) Varpio et al.’s explanation of theory, and (c) Rangel et al.’s empirical exploration of how the field has evolved.
Countless textbooks exist that can provide more detail, including (a) Researching Medical Education; (b) Health Professions Education Research Primer; and (c) Foundations of Health Professional Education Research. You are welcome to visit the CHES office space if you would like to peruse our library.
CHES offers many activities, at various depths of immersion, for those interested in making education scholarship a component of their academic career. See this link for a quick overview and the Events, Educational Programs, and Visiting CHES sections of the CHES website for more details.
If podcasts are your preferred way of gathering new information, you’ll find dozens in your favoured app, but see below for a list of examples:
- The Harvard Macy Institute
- Medical Education
- McGill’s Institute of Health Sciences Education
- The Curiosity Habit
- The Karolinska Institute
To start your own journal club, see McLeod et al.; the Research section of our website may be helpful to stimulate ideas for topics.
Critical to all research is the consideration of whether a new project builds meaningfully on pre-existing work. Research is hard enough without investing time, energy, and other resources into something that is already well-established. Exploring what has already been written within and outside of HPE on your topic can be difficult and requires dedicated effort.
As one starting point, the Research section of our website organizes CHES Member publications thematically in a way that might help you identify local authors with detailed knowledge of your domain of interest.
In addition to consulting with a librarian and faculty in CHES to help determine what search strategies are most likely to yield the information you want, consider adding the term “Best Evidence Medical Education” to your searches to identify relevant literature reviews.
And, of course, various artificial intelligence apps are now available to help tailor one’s search using natural language prompts. MedEdMentor is such a resource that is specific to HPE.
Once you have taken the time to “productively wallow” in the literature, we encourage you to try writing a Problem-Gap-Hook statement, as per Lingard’s advice, and to share it with others as a means to test the power of your developing rationale.
If you are considering developing your exploration into a literature review, you should carefully select a specific methodology to ensure rigour. In that regard, the JGME literature review series offers a useful resource.
We encourage you to connect with CHES faculty to get some methodological research support. As a start though, it is worth reviewing UBC policies and procedures, including the need to complete the Course on Research Ethics.
Take the time to read (a) about methodological traditions of relevance to your project, (b) reporting guidelines for the type of article you are planning, and (c) other articles that are similar in style and scope to the one you hope to eventually write. Each is a means of ensuring, during the design phase, that you do not overlook things to which peer reviewers are likely to attend.
At UBC, the Support Programs to Advance Research Capacity (SPARC) exists to help faculty find relevant grant competitions. We would also encourage you to sign up for CHES Membership to receive newsletters that include information about HPE specific funding opportunities.
The answer to this question is heavily dependent on your answer to “who will be interested?”. It is never too early though to think about what audience you hope to reach with your scholarship. There are countless conferences in HPE and dozens of journals that range from the general to those that are geography-, specialty- or training-level-specific. See the AAMC’s list for a non-comprehensive annotated bibliography. Do not forget though to review the current author guidelines on the website of any journal you are considering, both for the most up-to-date information and to understand the specific types of articles they publish. You are more likely to succeed if you ensure a good fit between your manuscript and the intent underlying specific journal sections.
For more general guidance on how to write effectively, browse through the Writer’s Craft series at Perspectives on Medical Education. And, never underestimate the value of serving as a peer reviewer (with mentorship if you’ve not done so before) to develop your own scholarship and writing skill.