Rethinking scholarship in medical education during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Poh-Sun Goh,John Sandars

doi:10.15694/mep.2020.000097.1

Abstract

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted society and communities across the world requiring new and innovative approaches for healthcare, work, education and leisure. Similar changes have been precipitated in medical education, producing a rapid and major impact on students, educators and institutions. However, institutions still require educators to engage with scholarship in medical education, including providing evidence for promotion and tenure. We propose that resolving this tension between the demands of delivering a high quality curriculum and maintaining scholarship in medical education during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic requires urgent consideration of a transformational change in the scholarship in medical education. Key aspects of this change are a focus on rapid cycles of research to inform teaching, with local and wider dissemination using newer rapid approaches to publication and social media, and acceptability of these changes by institutions.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an immense and extraordinary change to society and communities across the world requiring new and innovative approaches for healthcare, work, education and leisure
In this Personal View, we propose that a transformational change in how we consider scholarship in medical education during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic is urgently required
Institutions still require educators to engage with scholarship in medical education, including providing evidence for promotion and tenure

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an immense and extraordinary change to society and communities across the world requiring new and innovative approaches for healthcare, work, education and leisure. Scholarship in medical education is often an iterative cycle, with the experience of teaching identifying problems which leads to a research phase of discovery for the creation of new knowledge and understanding about the problem. The main challenges are likely to be greater acceptance of the action research or design research paradigm and recognition of the evidence and metrics of scholarship which are produced from dissemination in open access publications and social media Acceptance of these challenges is essential for taking full advantage of the rapid cycle iterative investigation and evaluation cycles that underpin the action research and design research paradigm. In an environment with multiple demands, including healthcare, teaching, academic and family, it is essential that opportunities for research and dissemination are both relevant to the urgent need to deliver the curriculum but can satisfy the demands of the institution to evidence scholarship in medical education. An important opportunity of combining teaching with research are learning communities of educators, with demonstrable impact on the academic achievement of learners (Vescio et al, 2008)

Conclusion

Notes On Contributors