Julie Brice

Thinking the post-colonial in medical education

Context  Western medicine and medical techniques are being exported to all corners of the world at an increasing rate. In a parallel wave of globalisation, Western medical education is also making inroads into medical schools, hospitals and clinics across the world. Despite this rapidly expanding field of activity, there is no body of literature discussing the relationship between post‐colonial theory and medical education.

Author misconduct: not just the editors' responsibility

Background  Researchers everywhere are under increasing pressure to publish in high quality journals. The amount of space available in a journal such as Medical Education has not kept pace with the rise in submissions. Against a background of fierce competition, authors sometimes cut corners. This may lead to misconduct.

What is the value of good medical education research

As the saying goes, those who pay the piper call the tune. In most countries where research is publicly funded there are national systems for assessing research outputs. Governments, research councils, charitable bodies and other investors all want value for money. Accordingly, the UK is currently undergoing a research assessment exercise (RAE) in a process which will be familiar to researchers in many countries worldwide. Since 1986, the four UK higher education funding bodies have sponsored successive RAEs, the outcomes of which have been used to inform funding allocations and to provide benchmarking for research quality. The current RAE will report its findings towards the end of 2008.

The Academy of Medical Educators: a professional home for medical educators in the UK.

In many ways, medical education as a field of research and professional practice is more threatened than it has ever been. Time available for teaching has been seriously curtailed with the new consultants’ contract. There is a consensus in the medical education community that the teaching of doctors needs to be taken more seriously as a field of practice and research. Medical teaching does not attract the career status it deserves and the result is that promising young medical educators may be deterred and disheartened almost before they have begun their teaching careers. There are many reasons for this, chief among which is that, traditionally, teaching medical students has been seen as one task among the many that doctors perform, unpaid and unrecognised, as part of their professional role. It takes time for attitudes to change. But the reasons for medical education’s lack of support and recognition go deeper than that. There are a number of structural, organisational and cultural challenges that affect funding and support at institutional, regional and national levels.

The changing landscape of medical education in the UK

The UK shares many characteristics with other western developed countries, including a current adherence to the view that defining educational outcomes enables improvements in learning and teaching and a more effective management of the learning and assessment process. There are, however, some features that make UK medical education unique or that give it a distinctive flavour. This article looks at the various forces that shape medical education in the UK and the structures that underpin its delivery, and discusses the distinctive climate that is produced, in which doctors, students and medical teachers are expected to work. We examine and assess these special features of UK medical education and report on the ways in which medical education and medical educators are adapting to the complex and constantly changing environment. We conclude that the healthcare and higher education systems in the UK face unprecedented economic and political challenges over the coming years. Medical educators working within these systems have an important role in ensuring that these challenges are met and that standards are maintained and improved. A stronger professional architecture to support careers in medical education is needed to ensure that those involved in teaching medical students and doctors have the necessary training, time, resources and incentives to do it effectively.

Leadership in medical education

A professional framework is needed to support teaching as a discipline

Publishing ethics in medical education journals

One issue that has repeatedly surfaced in nearly all journals is unethical or questionable practices regarding submission. Although flagrant breaches such as plagiarism are uncommon (or undetected), some practices, such as copy of text from one manuscript to another, submission of nearly identical analyses to different journals (“salami slicing”), inadequate attribution of prior work, and inappropriate authorship reporting (honorary authors) appear all too frequently. We believe that most of these breaches are committed in good faith and not malevolence, and simply represent a lack of awareness on the part of authors of accepted standards, and perhaps some legitimate differences in interpreting ethical standards and guidelines.