The Situational Analysis of Teaching-Learning in Clinical Education: Methodological Development in Medical Education Research

Background Clinical teaching-learning is a context-bound phenomenon. One of the problems related to research in clinical education is the lack of sufficient attention to coherent and context-appropriate methodologies. The clinical learning environment is inherently an integration of teaching and clinical care, which has made the nature of clinical education complicated and multifaceted. Improving and developing clinical teaching-learning requires not only an explanation of the current situation, but also the development of new research methods is necessary to reconstruct the teaching-learning system and, as a result, clinical education reinforcements. Methods in this study, the authors used the situational analysis approach as a postmodern version of grounded theory. Situational analysis is an approach for identifying and describing social worlds and action arenas by using maps to represent complexity. The data of this study were collected focusing on triangulation. Thirty-one participants were involved in the web-based qualitative survey, while seven participants took part in the semi-structured phone interview. Results the teaching-learning situation in clinical education on general medicine in Iran was represented in three maps; situational, social worlds/arenas, and positional. In addition, the results showed, clinical education of general medicine in Iran in 6 positions has serious problems and challenges. As a result, recommendations were provided to develop and support effective clinical teaching. Conclusions The findings of this research revealed key messages that can be explained using Foucault's discourse. In addition, from the methodological point of view, the present study encourages the use of the situational analysis approach to study complex systems and in order to educational excellence and improvement calls for further methodological development in medical education research.

Is reflection like soap? a critical narrative umbrella review of approaches to reflection in medical education research

Reflection is a complex concept in medical education research. No consensus exists on what reflection exactly entails; thus far, cross-comparing empirical findings has not resulted in definite evidence on how to foster reflection. The concept is as slippery as soap. This leaves the research field with the question, ‘how can research approach the conceptual indeterminacy of reflection to produce knowledge?’. The authors conducted a critical narrative umbrella review of research on reflection in medical education. Forty-seven review studies on reflection research from 2000 onwards were reviewed. The authors used the foundational literature on reflection from Dewey and Schön as an analytical lens to identify and critically juxtapose common approaches in reflection research that tackle the conceptual complexity. Research on reflection must deal with the paradox that every conceptualization of reflection is either too sharp or too broad because it is entrenched in practice. The key to conceptualizing reflection lies in its use and purpose, which can be provided by in situ research of reflective practices.

On the Multidisciplinary Perspective of Medical Education Model Research and Its Impact on Medical Students' Smoking Behavior

Medical education research is relatively an emerging field, which is not only because of its interdisciplinary nature of pedagogy and medicine, but more importantly, the methods and findings of medical education research are borrowed from research results and literature in the fields of pedagogy, history, sociology, cognition and psychology. This determines the multidisciplinary nature of medical education research. In fact, many research problems are complex and diverse, which requires the use of knowledge and resources in multiple disciplines and fields for understanding or solution. Hence, now more emphasis is placed on interdisciplinary research, rather than pure multidisciplinary research, which is to integrate the theories, thinking and methods of multiple disciplines to jointly study a problem. In medical education research, appropriate use of theories and methods of different disciplines may produce new theories and methods, which in turn may be used for reference by other disciplines and fields. On the premise of this multi-disciplinary perspective, this paper discusses the impact of the change of medical education model on the smoking behavior of medical students, and points out that the non-smoking behavior of medical students is especially affected by the interaction between the role model behavior of teachers in medical colleges and the teaching humanistic environment, Finally, the conclusion is that the research on medical education similar to complex cases needs to be examined from the perspective of integrated thinking and multi-disciplinary.

Barriers to cross-disciplinary knowledge flow: The case of medical education research

Introduction The medical education research field operates at the crossroads of two distinct academic worlds: higher education and medicine. As such, this field provides a unique opportunity to explore new forms of cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange. Methods Cross-disciplinary knowledge flow in medical education research was examined by looking at citation patterns in the five journals with the highest impact factor in 2017. To grasp the specificities of the knowledge flow in medical education, the field of higher education was used as a comparator. In total, 2031 citations from 64 medical education and 41 higher education articles published in 2017 were examined. Results Medical education researchers draw on a narrower range of knowledge communities than their peers in higher education. Medical education researchers predominantly cite articles published in health and medical education journals (80% of all citations), and to a lesser extent, articles published in education and social science journals. In higher education, while the largest share of the cited literature is internal to the domain (36%), researchers cite literature from across the social science spectrum. Findings suggest that higher education scholars engage in conversations with academics from a broader range of communities and perspectives than their medical education colleagues. Discussion Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa and field, it is argued that the variety of epistemic cultures entering the higher education research space contributes to its interdisciplinary nature. Conversely, the existence of a relatively homogeneous epistemic culture in medicine potentially impedes cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange.

Content-Based Medical Image Retrieval and Intelligent Interactive Visual Browser for Medical Education, Research and Care

Medical imaging is essential nowadays throughout medical education, research, and care. Accordingly, international efforts have been made to set large-scale image repositories for these purposes. Yet, to date, browsing of large-scale medical image repositories has been troublesome, time-consuming, and generally limited by text search engines. A paradigm shift, by means of a query-by-example search engine, would alleviate these constraints and beneficially impact several practical demands throughout the medical field. The current project aims to address this gap in medical imaging consumption by developing a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system, which combines two image processing architectures based on deep learning. Furthermore, a first-of-its-kind intelligent visual browser was designed that interactively displays a set of imaging examinations with similar visual content on a similarity map, making it possible to search for and efficiently navigate through a large-scale medical imaging repository, even if it has been set with incomplete and curated metadata. Users may, likewise, provide text keywords, in which case the system performs a content- and metadata-based search. The system was fashioned with an anonymizer service and designed to be fully interoperable according to international standards, to stimulate its integration within electronic healthcare systems and its adoption for medical education, research and care. Professionals of the healthcare sector, by means of a self-administered questionnaire, underscored that this CBIR system and intelligent interactive visual browser would be highly useful for these purposes. Further studies are warranted to complete a comprehensive assessment of the performance of the system through case description and protocolized evaluations by medical imaging specialists.