W1A1
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room C-1

WABI-SABI AND ADAPTIVE EXPERTISE: RETHINKING MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF AI

Judy Sng, Inthrani Raja Indran, Nurulhuda Mustafa and Juanita Kong
Singapore

In an era increasingly defined by artificial intelligence, automation, and performance metrics, medical and health professions education risks equating progress with efficiency. Learning is streamlined, assessments optimised, and teaching increasingly data-driven. Yet clinical practice itself remains irreducibly human, marked by ambiguity, uncertainty, imperfection, and context-sensitive judgement. How then should we educate future healthcare professionals — and the educators who train them — in the AI era?

Drawing inspiration from the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which embraces imperfection, incompleteness, and transience, this interactive workshop invites participants to rethink dominant assumptions about productivity and optimisation in medical education. Rather than viewing uncertainty as a problem to eliminate, we explore it as a necessary condition for cultivating adaptive expertise, humility, and professional discernment.

Through guided dialogue, small-group reflection, and live demonstration of AI chatbot interactions, participants will examine both the strengths and limitations of generative AI in educational settings. AI tools excel at pattern recognition and efficiency in routine tasks, but they also reveal the enduring importance of human judgement, contextual interpretation, and ethical reasoning. The workshop reframes AI not as a replacement for educators, but as a mirror - exposing where efficiency enhances learning and where it may flatten nuance.

Participants will leave with practical strategies for educating educators in the AI era: fostering reflective practice, designing learning experiences that preserve productive struggle, and modelling epistemic humility in environments increasingly shaped by algorithms. By embracing the wisdom of imperfection, medical education can move beyond metrics alone toward deeper, more humane forms of professional formation.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Examine how efficiency-driven narratives and AI technologies are reshaping medical and health professions education.
2. Explain the relevance of uncertainty, imperfection, and adaptive expertise in clinical training.
3. Critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of generative AI tools in educational settings.
4. Identify one practical strategy to preserve reflective practice and human judgement in AI-enabled learning environments.

This workshop is designed for medical and health professions educators, clinical teachers, curriculum designers, and faculty developers who are navigating the growing presence of artificial intelligence in education. It is particularly relevant for educators interested in reflective practice, professional formation, and adaptive expertise beyond performance metrics. Educational leaders, programme directors, and institutional decision-makers seeking to thoughtfully integrate AI while preserving human judgement and contextual sensitivity will also benefit. No prior technical knowledge of AI is required; the workshop is conceptual and pedagogical rather than tool-focused.

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W1A2
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room C-2

REFRAMING MEDICAL PROFESSIONALISM IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD: CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES AND EVOLVING VALUES BEYOND EFFICIENCY

¹Tomoko Miyoshi, ¹Junji Haruta, ¹Masashi Ikuno, 1Hitomi Kataoka, ²Yvonne Steinert and ¹Akiko Tokinobu
¹Japan and ²Canada

Over the past three decades, medical professionalism has been widely defined and institutionalised across medical education and healthcare systems. While these frameworks have provided important shared standards and guiding values, it is also essential to critically examine both their value and limitations in contemporary healthcare environments — characterised by uncertainty, complexity, and cultural diversity — which increasingly challenge traditional, often efficiency-driven models of professionalism.

Aligned with the APMEC 2027 theme, “The Wisdom of Imperfection: Learning Beyond Efficiency,” this workshop invites participants to critically explore how medical professionalism is evolving in response to societal changes, including shifts in patient expectations, interprofessional collaboration, and global cultural contexts.

Through interactive discussions, case-based reflections, and cross-cultural dialogue, participants will examine tensions between idealised professionalism and real-world practice, including ambiguity, moral distress, and the acceptance of imperfection. The workshop will also highlight how different cultural contexts shape understandings of professionalism, particularly in Asia and beyond.

Participants will collaboratively reframe professionalism as a dynamic, culturally situated construct, moving beyond rigid norms toward more adaptive, reflective, and human-centred approaches.

1. Describe key historical frameworks of medical professionalism and their limitations in contemporary healthcare contexts.
2. Analyse how cultural, social, and systemic factors influence the interpretation and practice of professionalism across different regions.
3. Reflect on tensions between “ideal” professionalism and real-world practice, including uncertainty, inefficiency, and imperfection.
4. Discuss the role of imperfection, vulnerability, and moral complexity in shaping modern professional identity.

• Medical educators (undergraduate and postgraduate faculty)
• Clinicians and clinical educators (including supervisors)
• Students in healthcare professions (medicine, nursing, and allied health)
• Researchers in medical ethics and professionalism
• Medical education curriculum developers
• Individuals interested in multicultural and international medical education

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W1A3
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room G

STRUCTURING WORKPLACE-BASED ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING: A THEORY-INFORMED SIX-STEP FRAMEWORK FOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

Chan Ping Tak, Albert Chan, Chan Chi Ngong Lawrence and So Hing Yu
Hong Kong S.A.R.

Participants will be able to:

1. Explain the theoretical principles underpinning the six-step framework for workplace-based assessment (WBA).
2. Facilitate pre-briefing and debriefing that promote psychological safety, reflection, and learner engagement.
3. Guide learners in co-constructing actionable SMART learning plans and documenting outcomes for programmatic assessment.
4. Identify contextual enablers and barriers to applying the framework within their own educational settings.
5. Share strategies for sustaining reflective assessment conversations through faculty development.

Clinical educators, supervisors, assessment leads, and faculty developers involved in postgraduate or continuing professional development programmes who wish to enhance their assessment practice through structured, reflective, and evidence-based feedback approaches.

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W1A4
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room H

BETWEEN INTENTION AND INTERPRETATION: RETHINKING UNPROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOUR IN CULTURALLY COMPLEX CLINICAL SETTINGS

¹Monika Pazio Rossiter, ¹Jo Horsburgh, ²Sayaka Oikawa and ²Maham Stanyon
¹United Kingdom and ²Japan

Unprofessional behaviour in medical education is commonly framed as a deficit within the individual learner, with remediation focused on correcting attitudes, knowledge, or skills. However, emerging evidence suggests this perspective is overly simplistic, overlooking how cultural norms and relational dynamics shape both the enactment and interpretation of professional behaviour. While there is broad consensus across contexts that professionalism is grounded in patient safety, what is prioritised as “unprofessional” may differ according to culturally embedded expectations related to hierarchy, communication, and moral responsibility.

In clinical environments, learners frequently navigate multiple and sometimes conflicting obligations to supervisors, teams, patients, and cultural norms. Behaviours perceived as unprofessional, such as silence, indirect communication, or reluctance to question authority or respond to feedback may therefore arise not solely from individual deficits, but from efforts to manage uncertainty and competing expectations within hierarchical, culturally shaped systems.

This workshop reframes unprofessional behaviour as relational and culturally situated and invites participants to engage with the “spaces between” communicative and behavioural intention and interpretation, individual values, intentions and knowledge and the system, professional expectation and cultural obligation.

By embracing uncertainty and fostering reflective, culturally responsive approaches, this workshop aligns with the development of adaptable healthcare professionals who can navigate complexity with curiosity, compassion and care. Participants will leave with expanded conceptual frameworks and actionable strategies to enhance professionalism teaching and feedback practices across diverse clinical settings.

Through case-based discussions drawn from clinical supervision and feedback encounters, participants will:

• Reflect on their own cultural lenses and how these shape judgements and responses.
• Examine how cultural norms and relational dynamics influence interpretations of professional behaviour.
• Analyse scenarios where “unprofessional” actions arise from conflicting social and professional obligations rather than lack of professionalism.
• Develop practical strategies to interpret and respond to unprofessional behaviour in ways that are context-sensitive, educative, adaptable and supportive of learner development.

This workshop is relevant for medical educators and clinical supervisors involved in teaching, assessment, and feedback in clinical settings. It will be particularly valuable for faculty responsible for addressing professionalism concerns, supporting learners in difficulty, and facilitating feedback conversations.

The session is also suitable for curriculum designers, educational leaders, and health professions educators interested in culturally responsive approaches to professionalism and learner development. While grounded in medical education, the workshop will be applicable to educators across health professions working in culturally diverse clinical environments.

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W1A5
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room 554

THE MINDFUL AI LEARNER: INTEGRATING EVIDENCE-BASED LEARNING SCIENCE WITH AI TOOLS WITHOUT COMPROMISING COGNITIVE DEPTH

¹Dilum Lakshan Munaweera Thantreege and ²Noor Akmal Shareela Ismail
¹Sri Lanka and ²Malaysia

AI tools are transforming how medical students acquire knowledge — but are they transforming how students actually learn? This hands-on workshop addresses a growing concern in health professions education: the risk that AI-driven efficiency may bypass the effortful cognitive processes essential for developing clinical expertise.

Participants will experience firsthand how the same AI tool can either deepen or diminish learning depending on how the interaction is designed. Using a clinical case scenario, attendees will engage with AI in two contrasting modes: first as a "cognitive substitute" (where AI provides ready-made answers), and then as a "cognitive scaffold" (where AI is deliberately designed to provoke retrieval, challenge reasoning, and sustain productive struggle).

The workshop is structured around three integrated components. First, participants explore seven evidence-based learning principles — including active recall, spaced repetition, interleaving, and the Feynman technique — and evaluate how each can be either enhanced or undermined by AI. Second, participants engage in a brief guided attention training exercise adapted from Buddhist mindfulness traditions, designed to cultivate the metacognitive awareness needed to monitor one's own learning state during AI-assisted study. Third, participants collaboratively design AI prompting strategies that preserve desirable difficulties while leveraging AI's genuine strengths.

By the end of the session, participants will have a practical toolkit: a set of "principled AI prompting" templates grounded in cognitive science, a personal checklist for evaluating whether any AI interaction supports or shortcuts genuine learning, and a brief attention practice they can integrate into their own teaching or study routines.

This workshop is designed for medical educators, curriculum designers, and clinical teachers who want to integrate AI into their teaching without sacrificing the cognitive depth that produces adaptive, expert clinicians.

Distinguish between AI use that functions as a cognitive scaffold (supporting the learner's own thinking) and AI use that functions as a cognitive substitute (replacing the learner's thinking), using specific criteria grounded in learning science. Apply seven evidence-based learning principles — deliberate practice, active recall, spaced repetition, the Feynman technique, interleaving, dual coding, and elaboration — to evaluate the pedagogical quality of any AI-enhanced learning interaction. Design AI prompting strategies for clinical education scenarios that deliberately preserve desirable difficulties, productive failure, and effortful retrieval rather than bypassing them. Practice a brief mindfulness-based attention training exercise to strengthen metacognitive awareness and help learners monitor whether AI is supporting or short-cutting their own thinking.

Medical educators, curriculum designers, clinical teachers, educational researchers.

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W1A6
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room 555

MAKING LEARNING SAFE FOR ALL - FOSTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY IN HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION THROUGH CULTURAL LENS

¹Chaoyan Dong, ²Nobutaro Ban, ²Francesco Bolstad, ³Elizabeth Kachur, ³Thanakorn Jirasevijinda and ¹Jenny Wong Lee Yuen
¹Singapore, ²Japan and ³United States of America

Psychological safety - defined as the shared belief that one can speak up without fear of negative consequences - is foundational to effective learning, feedback, and patient care. In its absence, learners may withhold questions, educators may avoid difficult feedback, and administrators may hesitate to advocate for necessary resources. These challenges are amplified in culturally diverse settings, where norms around hierarchy, communication, and face-saving vary significantly.

This interactive workshop examines psychological safety through a cultural and socio-ecological lens, highlighting how individual, interpersonal, and organisational factors intersect with cultural norms to shape learning environments. Participants will engage with authentic case scenarios from clinical and educational contexts, illustrating common tensions such as hierarchy, indirect communication, and differing expectations of professionalism in health professions education.

Using structured small-group discussions, participants will identify psychological safety threats and analyse how cultural assumptions influence behaviours and interpretations. Facilitators will guide participants to map these challenges across multiple levels (individual, team, programme, organisation) and co-develop contextually appropriate strategies.

The workshop will use practical, transferable approaches, including culturally responsive communication strategies, facilitation techniques for psychologically safe discussions, and programme-level interventions. Participants will leave with a structured framework and actionable strategies to foster inclusive, psychologically safe learning environments across diverse health professions education settings.

An international, interprofessional faculty team will bring perspectives from Asia, Europe, and North America, encouraging rich cross-cultural dialogue.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Explain how cultural factors influence psychological safety across individual, interpersonal, and organisational levels.
2. Identify common threats to psychological safety in culturally diverse health professions education settings.
3. Analyse real-world scenarios using a socio-ecological framework.
4. Apply culturally responsive strategies to enhance psychological safety in teaching, feedback, and programme design.

This workshop is designed for:

This workshop is suitable for clinical educators, faculty developers, programme directors, and education administrators across medicine, nursing, and allied health professions. It is particularly relevant for those working in culturally diverse or international contexts, and for educators seeking to improve feedback, learner engagement, and inclusive learning environments. Both early-career and experienced educators will benefit, as the workshop provides foundational concepts alongside practical strategies applicable to teaching, supervision, and programme leadership.

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W1A7
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room C-1

DESIGNING AND LEADING FACULTY DEVELOPMENT FOR IMPACT, GROWTH, AND SUSTAINABILITY: LESSONS FROM THE HARVARD MACY INSTITUTE

¹Sarah Wood, ¹David Roberts and ²Judy Sng
¹United States of America and ²Singapore

In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, the pursuit of quality and accreditation must evolve beyond traditional, discipline-specific approaches. This interactive three-hour workshop is designed for educators, administrators, clinicians, and accreditation leaders who are engaged in interdisciplinary and interprofessional environments. Through guided activities, small-group collaboration, and real-world case scenarios, participants will explore how accreditation standards can support—and even drive—collaborative practice, innovation, and continuous quality improvement.

The session will begin with a brief overview of current challenges and emerging trends in accreditation across disciplines, including the movement toward integrated standards that promote team-based care, systems thinking, and shared outcomes. Participants will then engage in a series of structured, hands-on exercises focused on:

• Mapping existing accreditation criteria to interprofessional competencies
• Identifying barriers to collaborative quality assessment
• Designing cross-disciplinary strategies for continuous improveme/li>

Participants will work in small teams to analyse sample accreditation scenarios and explore ideas that can be adapted for their own organisations. The workshop will conclude with a facilitated discussion on lessons learned, next steps for implementation, and strategies for influencing change within their respective institutions.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Describe key design principles and approaches underpinning the Harvard Macy Institute and related HMS faculty development programmes.
• Analyse how these principles can be adapted to diverse institutional and cultural contexts, including resource-limited settings.
• Draft or refine a plan for a new or existing faculty development programme, including aims, structure, and strategies for community-building and sustainability.
• Identify specific next steps and potential collaborators to support implementation after APMEC.

This workshop is designed for health professions educators, directors, deans, and educational leaders who are responsible for, or aspiring to, design, implement, or scale faculty development initiatives. It will be particularly relevant for colleagues seeking to strengthen educational leadership, build institutional capacity, or create new faculty development programmes. Participants at any stage of programme development — from early concept to established courses needing renewal — are welcome. Teams from the same institution or region are encouraged to attend together to maximise opportunities for shared planning, but motivated individuals attending alone will also benefit from the structured design activities and peer consultation.

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W1A8
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room C-2

TRANSFORMING FEEDBACK INTO DIALOGUE: NAVIGATING CULTURE, RELATIONSHIPS, AND LEARNING IN HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

¹Ardi Findyartini, ²Hiroshi Nishigori, ²Takeshi Kimura and ³Yvonne Steinert
¹Indonesia, ²Japan and ³Canada

Feedback is widely recognised as a cornerstone of learning in health professions education, particularly as part of coaching and workplace settings. Feedback is most effective not as unidirectional information delivery, but as an interactive, learner-centred dialogue that supports reflection, meaning-making, and actionable improvement. Such dialogic approaches enhance learner agency, promote self-regulated learning, and improve performance outcomes across educational contexts. Despite this, feedback practices in clinical education often remain limited to educator monologues, with minimal learner engagement and insufficient co-construction of improvement plans. This workshop addresses this gap by focusing on feedback as a dialogic, relational, and context-sensitive practice.

The workshop will explore feedback conversations across three key relational contexts: (1) teacher–student (supervisory feedback), (2) student–student (peer feedback), and (3) teacher–teacher (collegial feedback). Participants will examine how these interactions can be structured in both dyadic and small-group formats to foster psychological safety, shared understanding, and mutual accountability. Particular attention will be given to observable educator and learner behaviours that characterise high-quality feedback, including eliciting learner self-assessment, negotiating goals, and co-constructing action plans.

In addition, the workshop will critically examine the influence of cultural context on feedback practices. Emerging evidence highlights that feedback processes are deeply shaped by sociocultural factors, including hierarchy, power distance, and collectivist values — features common in many Asian educational settings. In such contexts, learners may be less likely to question authority, and educators may hesitate to provide direct critique, potentially limiting open dialogue. Therefore, adopting feedback models without cultural adaptation may reduce their effectiveness. Participants will explore culturally responsive strategies to facilitate feedback dialogue, such as scaffolding learner participation, building longitudinal relationships, and explicitly developing feedback literacy among both learners and educators.

Through interactive activities, a simulation, and facilitated reflection, participants will practice designing and conducting feedback conversations tailored to their specific contexts, particularly in busy clinical environments.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to: (1) apply principles of dialogic feedback in diverse educational relationships, (2) facilitate effective feedback conversations in dyadic and group settings, and (3) adapt feedback strategies to align with cultural and institutional contexts. Ultimately, this workshop aims to support educators in moving from feedback as transmission to feedback as meaningful dialogue, thereby enhancing learning, professional development, and patient care outcomes.

Clinical educators, health professions educators, faculty developers.

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W1A9
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room G

ACADEMIC MENTORING TO SUPPORT LEARNERS IN DISTRESS THROUGH UNCERTAINTY, IMPERFECTION AND GROWTH

Inthrani Raja Indran, Derrick Lian and Nicholas Ng Beng Hui
Singapore

Learners across preclinical and clinical training frequently face academic stressors, which may be compounded by personal and professional challenges that affect wellbeing, engagement, and performance. Training academic mentors is therefore critical; without structured preparation, mentors may feel uncertain about how to respond consistently, differentiate common learning challenges from more complex concerns, and recognise when escalation or referral is needed.

This interactive workshop invites mentors to balance action with reflection ― supporting learners without over-correcting and holding space for uncertainty while guiding practical next steps. Using authentic case vignettes spanning preclinical and clinical contexts, participants will work in small groups to analyse presenting concerns, identify likely contributing factors (e.g., learning strategy gaps, cognitive overload, motivational disruption, anxiety, burnout, professionalism concerns), and select mentoring responses that are timely and proportionate.

The workshop will introduce a structured approach to mentoring conversations, including practical strategies students can implement, indicators for referral, and communication techniques that support help-seeking. This would include the ability to screen and recognise adaptive vs. maladaptive responses to academic failure. The session concludes with facilitated reflection on gaps and future directions―how mentoring can normalise imperfection, enable learning from setbacks, and strengthen coordinated support for learners in distress. Participants will leave with a ready-to-use handout, case prompts, and practical scripts to support mentoring conversations.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Apply a structured framework to diagnose common learner concerns across preclinical and clinical settings.
2. Select targeted, appropriately bounded mentoring strategies that promote learner agency and self-directed improvement.
3. Use communication techniques that normalise academic imperfections as part of development while maintaining academic standards.
4. Recognise indicators for referral and escalation, including screening for maladaptive responses to academic setback.

This workshop is intended for faculty and staff involved in academic mentoring, advising, coaching, or learner support in undergraduate and postgraduate health professions education (medicine, dentistry, nursing, and allied health). It is particularly relevant for mentors who regularly meet learners experiencing academic difficulty, or challenges navigating support systems. New mentors will gain practical structure; experienced mentors will benefit from shared strategies and case-based discussion.

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W1A10
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room H

MAKING SENSE OF CONFLICTING FEEDBACK IN WORKPLACE SETTINGS: SUPPORTING LEARNERS TO MAKE THE MOST OF THE SPACES BETWEEN PERFECTION AND PROGRESS

¹Katharine Ann Mary Boursicot and ²Jennifer Williams
¹Singapore and ²Australia

One of the most important components of workplace-based assessment (WBA) is feedback on directly observed clinical performances with a real patient in a working environment. The main objective is to offer actionable feedback for the learner in a nurturing learning culture.

Learners sometimes feel challenged by the varying nature of the feedback they receive and find it difficult to embrace the uncertainty of the mixed messages they encounter. They need support to understand that WBA is part of their journey in becoming a qualified healthcare professional and that reflection on the varying messages they receive is part of that growth trajectory.

Teachers are critical in the system, both in terms of conducting the sessions and offering appropriate actionable feedback but need comprehensive faculty development.

In this workshop, we will guide participants in considering the purposes of WBA, discuss the evidence for best practice in feedback, and engage in some hands-on activities.

Participants will

1. Consider the underlying purposes of WBA in their practice
2. Engage with the evidence-based best practice in feedback
3. Understand about becoming a healthcare professional via WBA and feedback
4. Learn how to support students in dealing with uncertainty and conflicting messages in feedback

• Teachers of healthcare professions students
• Students who want to understand the usefulness of WBA and feedback in their learning trajectory

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W1A11
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room 554

MEDICAL HUMANITIES AND INTERPRETIVE CARE IN THE AGE OF AI

David Mathew and Michelle Chiang
Singapore

AI is already reshaping medical education and clinical practice. Students and clinicians are using AI to summarise information, generate explanations, draft notes, and support decision-making. The growing presence of AI in medicine, however, raises important questions about interpretation, responsibility, and care. What does AI make easier to see, and what does it encourage us to overlook? How might AI-supported outputs smooth over uncertainty, flatten lived experience, or interference as fact? What remains of the clinician’s professional responsibility when AI becomes part of everyday practice?

This workshop brings medical humanities into conversation with these pressing questions. It begins by surfacing participants’ own lived experiences of using AI in medicine, before offering a short mini lecture on the aims of medical humanities in medical education. The workshop then moves through a series of interactive segments focused on perspective, interpretation, uncertainty, and judgement. Participants will examine how clinical situations can be read differently depending on what is foregrounded, discuss a clinical vignette in which important human and relational details remain open to interpretation, and analyse an AI-generated artefact that appears plausible yet invites closer scrutiny.

The second half of the workshop invites participants to collaboratively rewrite an AI-supported output in a more ethically responsible and professionally accountable way. The session concludes by returning to participants’ lived experiences of AI use and inviting reflection on how they might approach AI-supported outputs more responsibly in future practice.

Rather than treating AI as either a threat or a solution, this medical humanities workshop asks what kinds of reading, reflection, and judgement become even more important in a medical landscape that is increasingly shaped by AI.

This workshop aims to demonstrate how medical humanities can support medical education in the age of AI by strengthening interpretation, ethical reflection, and responsible judgement. Through discussion, close reading, vignette analysis, and rewriting exercises, participants will examine how AI-supported outputs can shape understanding of patients and professional responsibility. The workshop will help participants identify what AI may omit, simplify, or overstate, and consider how clinicians can respond more thoughtfully and accountably. By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer sense of how to use AI critically while keeping lived experience, relational care, and professional judgement in view.

This workshop is intended for anyone who wants to think seriously about how medicine can engage AI without losing sight of lived experience and interpretive care. It is open to all educators in medical practice, be it doctors, nurses, allied health and medical educators. The topics covered in this workshop can be applied to various stages of medical education. Participants do not need technical expertise in AI.

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W1A12
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room 555

STRATEGIES FOR REDUCING BIASES IN PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENTS - A SYSTEMS APPROACH

¹Elizabeth Kachur, ²Nobutaro Ban, ²Francesco Bolstad, ³Chaoyan Dong, ¹Thanakorn Jirasevijinda and ³Jenny Wong Lee Yuen
¹United States of America, ²Japan and ³Singapore

Assessments are critical elements of every training endeavour. Their purpose can range from formative (for learning) to summative (of learning). Although educators aim for accurate and fair assessments of knowledge, skills and attitudes/values, conscious and unconscious biases can interfere with those sincere efforts. Biases are a human condition everybody is wired for. They help sort out and make meaning of the many stimuli that constantly flood our senses. Benson and Manoogian’s Cognitive Bias Codex (2016) identified 188 of such systematic deviations from making rational judgements. While these psychological phenomena can be explained, they are likely to interfere with key assessment principles: accuracy and fairness. This highly interactive pre-conference workshop will use a systems approach to analyse the various assessment components, and to formulate strategies for combating biases, from test development to training those who complete performance-based evaluations. Polling, small group exercises and case-based discussions will be used for in-depth explorations.

Interventions to mitigate biases in assessments include the analysis of past performance data and bias-detection checklists to examine blueprints and case materials. Artificial Intelligence can also be employed to identify bias traps and suggest more optimal approaches to written instructions or rating forms. Evaluator-based interventions include rater selection and assignment strategies as well as rater training to enhance observation skills, judgements and reporting practices. Over the years multiple instructional methods have been developed such as Frame-of-Reference (FoR) training to help evaluators use a shared standard. Modern assessment theory suggests that bias mitigation is a system responsibility, and thus no single intervention will be adequate. This workshop will help participants create a toolbox that addresses individual to systems needs and that can be applied to assessment work at their home institution.

At the end of the workshop participants should be able to:

1. List three types of biases that are common in performance-based assessments and identify three types of interventions that can counter their effect
2. Identify bias risks when evaluating specific assessment tools (e.g., OSCE stations, Mini-CEX patient assignments)
3. Explain why it is necessary to consider biases as a systems problem that requires multiple interventions
4. Create a plan for assessing and mitigating biases in their own assessment work

Individuals involved in the creation, administration or evaluation of performance-based assessments whether they are simulation- or work-based. Others interested in examining and mitigating the impact of biases on performance assessments.

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W1P1
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room C-1

WHAT CAN I TRUST YOU TO DO? MAKING ENTRUSTMENT DECISIONS USING ENTRUSTABLE PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES (EPAS) IN COMPETENCY-BASED MEDICAL EDUCATION

Ng Wei Xiang, James Kwan Wei-Yung, Lim Wen Phei and Ivy Ng Weishan
Singapore

Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are increasingly used in competency-based medical education to guide assessment and progression decisions. However, while many faculty development initiatives focus on how to design or implement EPAs, educators often struggle with a more challenging question: how do we decide when a trainee can truly be trusted to perform a professional activity with less supervision?

This interactive workshop focuses on the process of making entrustment decisions using EPAs. Participants will explore how educators translate workplace observations and assessment data into decisions about trainee autonomy and supervision.

The workshop will begin with a short experiential exercise in which participants evaluate two contrasting scenarios and discuss whom they would trust with responsibility for a task. This activity highlights the complexity of trust judgements and introduces key concepts underlying entrustment decisions.

Participants will then be introduced to a structured framework (ARICH) for conceptualising trust in clinical training. Facilitators will briefly review how entrustment decisions are informed by multiple sources of evidence, including workplace-based assessments, narrative feedback, simulation assessments, and multi-source feedback.

The core of the workshop will consist of hands-on small-group activities in which participants analyse simulated trainee portfolios containing longitudinal assessment data across several EPAs. Participants will assume the role of a Progression Committee, synthesising evidence and collectively deciding the appropriate level of supervision for different trainees. Facilitated discussions will explore the factors that influence entrustment decisions — including learner characteristics, task complexity, contextual factors and assessor biases — and strategies to improve fairness and reliability.

By the end of the workshop, participants will gain practical experience in making and justifying entrustment decisions, using a structured framework and collaborative deliberation.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the principles underlying entrustment decisions in competency-based medical education and how they differ from traditional domain-based assessments.
2. Apply the ARICH framework (Agency, Reliability, Integrity, Capability and Humility) to assess trainee trustworthiness in clinical training.
3. Analyse and synthesise multiple sources of assessment evidence — including workplace-based assessments, narrative feedback and multisource feedback — to determine trainee readiness for increased autonomy.
4. Evaluate trainee performance and justify appropriate levels of supervision when making entrustment decisions in competency or progression committees.

This workshop is intended for clinical educators, programme directors, faculty members and assessment leads involved in competency-based education across undergraduate, postgraduate or allied health training programmes.

It will be particularly useful for educators who supervise trainees in the workplace or participate in competency or progression committees, such as Clinical Competency Committees.

Participants seeking practical strategies for interpreting assessment data, calibrating supervision decisions and conducting structured entrustment discussions will benefit from the highly interactive, case-based activities in this workshop.

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W1P2
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room C-2

WISDOM OF THE SILENT CROWD: EMBRACING IMPERFECTION TO AMPLIFY DIVERSE CULTURAL VOICES IN HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

¹Hiroshi Nishigori, ²Ardi Findyartini and ³Subha Ramani
¹Japan, ²Indonesia and ³United States of America

Health professions education (HPE) is built on dialogue across cultures, languages, and educational traditions. Advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a shared aspiration of the global HPE community. However, dominant academic norms in conferences and publishing often privilege rapid verbal participation, and confident self-presentation, often in English. For many educators and scholars, particularly those from non-English-speaking and collectivist cultural contexts, values such as humility, reflective listening, and respect for hierarchy shape engagement. These culturally grounded practices may be misinterpreted as passivity or limited scholarly contribution and framed as “imperfect” participation; however, they often represent deep engagement and culturally grounded wisdom. From this perspective, moments of silence, uncertainty, and incompleteness are not deficits but valuable spaces for learning.

Consequently, perspectives from many regions remain underrepresented across conferences and journals. When such voices are marginalised, the HPE community loses access to rich, contextually grounded knowledge shaped by diverse healthcare systems, cultures, and lived experiences. Creating inclusive scholarly spaces requires intentional redesign of participation, moderation, and dialogue, shifting the focus from speed and performance towards openness, reflection, and valuing diverse ways of knowing.

This workshop includes:

• Presentations and discussions after each presentation:
  • Reframing participation cultures in HPE, valuing culturally diverse ways of engaging
  • Fostering inclusive moderation practices that enable equitable participation
  • Developing editorial and peer review practices that recognise and support diverse scholarly voices
• Small-group discussions: Reflection on experiences of inclusion and exclusion in HPE contexts, with attention to moments of silence, hesitation, or uncertainty as integral to learning.
• Group sharing: Sharing key insights from group discussions, highlighting how “imperfect” participation contributes to deeper understanding.
• Closing reflections: Open Q&A, reflection, and co-creation of strategies to support inclusive participation, moderation, and authorship in conferences and scholarly publishing.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Identify cultural, linguistic, and structural barriers that silence voices in global HPE;
2. Recognise how efficiency-driven academic norms may unintentionally marginalise diverse forms of participation;
3. Apply inclusive facilitation and moderation strategies to amplify participation in conferences and events;
4. Reframe silence, hesitation, and non-linear participation as meaningful and valuable forms of engagement;
5. Recognise and value diverse scholarly contributions during peer review and editorial processes;
6. Develop practical strategies to support emerging scholars’ engagement and publication while respecting and sustaining their cultural identities and ways of participation.

This workshop is designed for:

• Emerging health professions education (HPE) educators and scholars who wish to engage more confidently in international HPE conferences and scholarly communities while maintaining and valuing their own cultural identities and communication practices;
• Conference moderators, facilitators, and educational leaders seeking practical strategies to design and lead inclusive sessions that embrace diverse ways of engaging, contributing, and communicating.
• Journal editors, peer reviewers, and experienced HPE scholars interested in recognising and supporting diverse scholarly voices and outputs in global HPE publishing, including those that may not conform to dominant norms of academic performance.

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W1P3
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room G

THE WISDOM OF IMPERFECTION: REFRAMING CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT BEYOND EFFICIENCY

¹Helena Maria Prior Filipe, ²Goh Poh-Sun, ³Harumi Gomi and ⁴Elisabeth Frieda Schlegel
¹Portugal, ²Singapore, ³Japan and ⁴United States of America

Contemporary Continuing Professional Development (CPD) systems increasingly emphasise efficiency, standardisation, and measurable compliance. While strengthening accountability and reliability, these approaches may unintentionally narrow professional learning to competence maintenance rather than cultivating the adaptive expertise required in complex, rapidly evolving healthcare environments. Healthcare professionals routinely navigate uncertainty, multimorbidity, technological disruption, and organisational pressures, contexts where capability depends not only on efficiency but on interpreting ambiguity, reflecting critically, adapting responsively, and learning continuously from experience. Yet efficiency-dominant CPD cultures can suppress reflective practice, discourage open discussion of uncertainty, and undervalue productive learning from imperfection.

This workshop reframes CPD as a developmental ecosystem where uncertainty, error, and productive struggle catalyse professional growth, identity formation, and organisational learning. Drawing on adaptive expertise theory, workplace learning scholarship, professional identity formation research, and organisational learning frameworks, the session explores how CPD structures can better support reflective practice, psychological safety, and adaptive capability.

The workshop integrates four brief presentations with facilitated reflection and dialogue addressing the efficiency paradox in CPD, where optimisation may undermine adaptive expertise; imperfection as curriculum, examining how uncertainty and professional vulnerability drive reflective learning and identity formation; designing developmental CPD ecosystems, focusing on workplace learning, psychological safety and reflective infrastructures; and AI, measurement and the future of CPD, exploring how digital technologies might support adaptive growth rather than reinforcing performance metrics. During this experience, participants co-work in a simulated learning lab to reframe CPD and carry out a Failure Forward Canvas activity based on the GROW model (Goals, Reality, Options, Will), helping them address professional learning challenges relevant to their own contexts.

The workshop concludes with a discussion about re-designing CPD systems from compliance-oriented into developmental ecosystems that balance efficiency, reflection, workplace-learning, and psychological safety. This approach supports adaptive expertise, strengthens professional identity, and encourages collective learning in the contemporary complex healthcare systems.

By the end of the workshop participants will be able to:

1. Examine the efficiency–adaptation tension within contemporary CPD systems.
2. Recognise how uncertainty, error, and reflective struggle contribute to adaptive expertise and professional identity formation.
3. Apply the GROW framework within a Failure Forward Canvas to analyse learning challenges and identify developmental opportunities.
4. Identify organisational conditions enabling psychological safety, reflective infrastructure, and workplace learning.
5. Explore how simulation, morbidity and mortality review, and AI-supported learning support developmental CPD ecosystems.
6. Generate practical ideas for shifting CPD from compliance metrics toward adaptive professional capability.

This workshop is designed for leaders and educators shaping professional learning systems in healthcare and related professions. Participants may include:

• Directors and coordinators of continuing professional development
• Health professions educators and curriculum designers
• Clinical leaders involved in simulation, morbidity and mortality review, or workplace learning
• Academic faculty interested in professional identity formation and adaptive expertise
• Health system administrators responsible for learning culture and quality improvement
• Researchers exploring professional learning, reflective practice, or organisational learning

The workshop will be particularly valuable for individuals seeking to move beyond credit-based CPD models toward developmental, reflective, and adaptive learning ecosystems.

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W1P4
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room H

DESIGNING ETHICAL, EDUCATIONALLY GROUNDED AI‑SUPPORTED ASSESSMENTS: FROM PROMPT ENGINEERING TO ADAPTIVE LEARNING

¹Shekhar Kumta, ²Yan Jin, ¹Michael Wan and ²Alex Yung
¹Australia and ²Hong Kong S.A.R.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping health professions education and assessment. Building on discussions from recent AMEE, Ottawa, and APMEC meetings, this interactive two-hour workshop explores how educators can design AI-supported assessments that are pedagogically robust, ethically responsible, and adaptively intelligent.

The session begins with a concise overview of global developments in AI and assessment, highlighting contemporary research on multimodal and AI-driven competence evaluation. Through short case studies, participants will examine how AI is being integrated into simulation-based, workplace-based, and high-stakes assessments, using a guided rubric to identify underlying educational constructs such as authenticity, fairness, feedback literacy, and programmatic validity. Discussions will address both the added value and potential risks of AI, including bias, opacity, and over‑surveillance.

Central to the workshop is the introduction of the AI-Assessment Design Canvas — a concise, research-informed framework to map opportunities for AI integration across formative and summative contexts. Working in small, interdisciplinary teams, participants will apply the canvas to address authentic challenges such as:

• Early identification of struggling learners
• Scaling narrative-rich, personalised feedback
• Enhancing transparency and defensibility in high‑stakes assessment decisions

A practical component will guide participants in AI prompt design and adaptation, enabling them to craft AI queries and scenarios grounded in educational principles (e.g. Bloom’s taxonomy, adaptive learning theory, and clinical authenticity). This hands-on activity will help participants generate complex, contextually rich questions with multiple plausible solutions — supporting both deep learning and adaptive testing.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Articulate the educational foundations underpinning AI-enabled assessment design.
• Critically appraise AI tools and outputs through validity, ethics, and fairness frameworks.
• Develop effective AI prompts that generate complex, realistic assessment items.
• Apply the AI-Assessment Design Canvas to create implementable AI-supported assessment strategies for their own institutions.

Medical and health professions educators, assessment leads, educational designers, and faculty development specialists seeking to integrate AI into assessment and learning design.

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W1P5
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room 554

FROM WABI-SABI TO KINTSUGI: RECOGNISING INHERENT IMPERFECTION AND GENERATIVE REPAIR IN CLINICAL EDUCATION

¹Itsuki Sano, ¹Nobukazu Komatsu, ¹Seiko Miura, ¹Mario Morishita, ²Jonas Nordquist and ¹Fumitaka Tanemura
¹Japan and ²Sweden

Clinical education unfolds within environments characterised by uncertainty, imperfection, and disruption. These conditions are often framed as problems to be minimised through increasing control or certainty. This workshop offers a complementary perspective by introducing Wabi-Sabi and Kintsugi as interconnected approaches to engaging with uncertainty in clinical learning environments.

Wabi-Sabi emphasises the recognition and acceptance of impermanence, incompleteness, and ambiguity. It invites educators and clinicians to attend to clinical reality as it is, without premature judgement or the pursuit of false certainty. Kintsugi, in contrast, addresses what follows disruption: the deliberate integration of rupture into new forms of meaning and value. Rather than positioning these perspectives as oppositional, the workshop presents them as a developmental continuum.

Guided by the six-avenues framework of the clinical learning environment, participants will explore how uncertainty manifests across psychological, sociocultural, educational, and structural dimensions.

The session combines brief interactive inputs with scenario-based discussion to examine how different educational responses shape learners’ experiences. A central experiential activity, Kintsugi Reflection, invites participants to revisit moments of disruption or incompleteness in their own contexts and to consider how these experiences may inform adaptive expertise and professional development.

This workshop reframes clinical education not simply as a problem-solving endeavour, but as a dynamic system in which recognition and repair are both essential for learning and growth.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to distinguish and meaningfully connect the complementary roles of Wabi-Sabi, as the recognition of inherent imperfection, and Kintsugi, as generative repair following disruption, within clinical education. They will develop the capacity to reframe clinical uncertainty as both an ontological condition of practice and a valuable educational resource, while recognising moments of ambiguity, incompleteness, and “suchness (ambivalence)” that resist premature resolution. In addition, participants will apply Kintsugi-informed reflective approaches to explore how rupture, error, and disruption contribute to adaptive expertise and professional meaning, and identify practical strategies for fostering learning environments that support both recognition and responsive repair of uncertainty.

This workshop is intended for clinical educators, faculty developers, and health professions education leaders involved in undergraduate, postgraduate, or continuing professional education. It will be particularly valuable for clinicians supervising learners in complex, high-uncertainty settings; educators focused on professionalism, reflective practice, and adaptive expertise; and academic leaders shaping learning cultures around error, hierarchy, and institutional repair. Participants interested in culturally grounded perspectives on uncertainty and learning will find the workshop especially relevant. No prior familiarity with Wabi-Sabi or Kintsugi is required.

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W1P6
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room 555

BEYOND LINGUISTIC PERFECTION: STRATEGIES FOR NEGOTIATING LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING IN MEDICAL COMMUNICATION

¹Francesco Bolstad, ¹Nobutaro Ban, ²Chaoyan Dong, ³Thanakorn Jirasevijinda, ³Elizabeth Kachur and ²Jenny Wong Lee Yuen
¹Japan, ²Singapore and ³United States of America

English is the lingua franca of modern medicine, yet medical practitioners are often expected to transition from classroom English to high-stakes clinical practice with very little support. In this context, competence is often misconstrued as linguistic perfection — an emphasis on flawless grammar and syntax. In reality, language is a complex vehicle for constructing meaning, negotiating professional hierarchy, and navigating the sociocultural norms of practice. For learners in non-native contexts, the pressure to achieve perfection can lead to an authenticity gap, professional isolation, and risks to patient safety.

Aligning with the theme of "The Wisdom of Imperfection," this workshop brings together experts from Japan, Singapore, and the USA to explore the multifaceted role of language in health professions education (HPE) and clinical interactions. We argue that "Learning Beyond Efficiency" requires moving past the pursuit of linguistic perfection toward a model of Communicative Flexibility. Drawing on diverse institutional backgrounds and clinical experience — from specialised language and content-integrated curricula design in Japan and multicultural clinical settings in Singapore to expert OSCE design in New York — the facilitators aim to show:

• The Impact of Linguistic Confidence: How the struggle for "perfection" affects the development of professional identity and psychological safety.
• Meta-Skills for Global Collaboration: Re-framing Clinical English as a strategic tool for navigating real-world communication.
• Innovative Assessment: Using and designing OSCEs and simulations for practice and to evaluate how practitioners negotiate meaning and demonstrate empathy in linguistically "imperfect" encounters.

By synthesising these perspectives, this workshop offers an experiential window into preparing trainees for a globalised healthcare workforce where "listening to understand" is as critical as "speaking to be understood."

By the end of this experiential session, participants will be able to:

• Analyse how the pursuit of "linguistic perfection" creates identity dissonance and psychological barriers for medical learners.
• Identify "Communicative Flexibility" meta-skills that allow practitioners to negotiate meaning at the clinical coalface when formal language fails.
• Design a blueprint for an OSCE station or simulation scenario that specifically assesses cross-cultural and linguistic navigation.
• Construct Global Rating Scales (GRS) that prioritise patient-centred understanding and empathy over grammatical accuracy, providing a more authentic assessment of clinical competence in a globalised healthcare environment.

This workshop is designed for health professions educators, clinical supervisors, and assessment leads who navigate the "Wisdom of Imperfection" in globalised settings. It is particularly relevant for those training International Medical Graduates (IMGs), educators in non-native English-speaking contexts across Asia, and faculty development leads focused on communication skills. Clinicians interested in the intersection of psychological safety and language, as well as OSCE coordinators looking to innovate their assessment of "humanistic" competencies, will find this session invaluable. No specialised linguistic background is required — only a commitment to enhancing clinical communication and student resilience.

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W1P7
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room C-1

STRUGGLE, FAILURE, AND ADAPTATION AS PIVOT POINTS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING IN CBME

¹Calvin Chou, ¹Jean Klig and ²James Kwan Wei-Yung
¹United States of America and ²Singapore

Struggle and failure are foundational to learning yet often are undesirable to HPE learners. Further, criteria for distinguishing between productive and unproductive strategies can be elusive. Learner adaptability is also key to learning and may even offer pathways to interpreting whether a learner may need remediation. If we can incorporate a collective ‘mentor mindset’ that embraces the role of struggle, failure, and adaptation in transformative learning, we can be more effective with all learners and utilise the pivot points in this learning to understand and build robust systems of CBME. Participants will actively engage through conceptual discussion, practical tools, and peer consultation across three segments.

1. Impact of Struggle and Failure:
   After interactive opening presentations on struggle and failure in learning, participant table groups will critique the benefits and drawbacks of these experiences in HPE, followed by large group debrief and a presenter team summary.
2. Distinguishing Productive from Unproductive:
   Case scenarios will be used to prompt participant table group brainstorming on how we distinguish productive and unproductive struggle or failure, followed by large group debrief and a presenter team summary.
3. Pivot Points:
   Interactive presentations will be used to identify key components of adaptive learning, followed by table discussions of a challenging case with question prompts that explore the interplay of struggle, failure, and adaptation as pivot points for transformative learning.
4. Mentor mindset:
   Following a presentation on the mentor mindset, we will end with a “troika” consultation exercise where each participant can present a real or sample case and offer suggestions to facilitate adapting strategies to home institutions, followed by takeaways from participants, closing comments by presenters, and questions from the large group.

• Discuss struggle and failure in learning and critique their impact on HPE.
• Identify criteria to distinguish between productive and unproductive struggle or failure.
• Evaluate the role of adaptation in HPE and how it can be supported and amplified to deepen learning.
• Consider the role of a mentor mindset to promote transformational learning.

Faculty responsible for remediating struggling learners; Leaders responsible for competency review decisions or educational planning.

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W1P8
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room C-2

THE BEAUTY IN IMPERFECT PUBLISHING SYSTEMS: CELEBRATING CONTEXT, NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY, AND MAINTAINING HUMANITY IN HPE SCHOLARSHIP

¹Anna Cianciolo, ¹Audrea Burns, ¹Candace Chow, ²Lu Peih-Ying and ¹Subha Ramani
¹United States of America and ²Taiwan

At international medical education journals, positioned at the intersection of generalisability and contextual variation, editorial decision-making navigates several tensions: balancing "global standards" with contextual relevance, maintaining rigorous critique while fostering humane peer review, and promoting understanding of ethical and meaningful AI-assisted scholarship. This workshop will explore how editors, peer reviewers, and authors engage these tensions, framing editors and reviewers less as arbiters of certainty and more as stewards of uncertainty within imperfect systems. By celebrating contextual variation, fostering constructive scholarly dialogue, and protecting human interests in the age of AI, international journals can move beyond efficiency-driven models of publishing toward reflective practice, humanism, and joy in medical education scholarship. This workshop will take place in 6 phases that each combine brief didactics, small-group exercise, and large-group discussion:

Phase 1: Introductions and Orientation – Participants will introduce themselves, and the facilitators will present brief didactics conveying the workshop’s objectives;

Phase 2: Defining the Imperfect System – Participants will discuss the implications of “publish or perish” for authors and editors working in a complex, global context and brainstorm opportunities for making beauty out of this imperfection;

Phase 3: Embracing Complexity, Celebrating Context – Participants will explore how context affects methodologies and theories commonly accepted as universal;

Phase 4: Navigating Uncertainty in a Richly Diverse World – Participants will exercise the justice-oriented peer review practice of centring review comments on curiosity, kindness, and perspective;

Phase 5: Retaining Humanity as a Time-Pressured Scholar – Participants will identify and discuss the human interests affected by using AI in medical education scholarship, exploring how to preserve humanism in an AI-saturated world;

Phase 6: Wrap-up – Participants will share overall reflections and receive materials to facilitate their participation in all aspects of international publishing (authorship, peer review, editorial decision making).

By the end of the workshop, attendees should be able to:

• Analyse from diverse perspectives the imperfect system of publishing medical education scholarship and identify the potential that important and impactful scholarly output finds a voice regardless of its origin and form
• Describe the interplay of “global standards” and contextual-cultural relevance in the international scholarly community
• Identify the hallmark characteristics of humane peer review under conditions of uncertainty and complexity arising from contextual variation
• Explore the implications of integrating AI into scholarly collaborations for prioritising humanity over efficiency

This workshop is ideal for medical education scholars at intermediate to advanced levels of scholarly experience. However, input and reflection will be valued from those seeking to publish journal articles, as well as those with peer review and editorial experience.

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W1P9
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room G

ADVANCING PATIENT SAFETY THROUGH EDUCATION: ADOPTING AND ADAPTING AAMC QIPS COMPETENCIES TO DRIVE PRACTICE TRANSFORMATION ACROSS THE LEARNING CONTINUUM

Alison Whelan and Lisa Howley
United States of America

As health systems worldwide face increasing complexity, quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) have become essential competencies for all health professionals. Education is a powerful lever to embed QIPS principles into clinical practice, yet many institutions struggle to translate competency frameworks into actionable teaching, assessment, and systems change. This interactive 3-hour workshop introduces the AAMC QIPS Competencies as a practical, evidence-informed framework to advance safety through education across the learning continuum.

The session is informed by the AAMC’s longstanding Teaching for Quality (Te4Q) faculty development programme, which was designed to support the integration of QIPS competencies into medical education. Te4Q provides a tested model for building educator capacity in curriculum design, workplace-based teaching, and assessment aligned with QIPS principles. This workshop distils key insights and strategies from Te4Q into a highly interactive format suitable for a global audience.

With the competencies currently being translated into Japanese, this session is particularly timely for international participants seeking adaptable approaches to QIPS integration. This workshop represents the first international offering of the AAMC QIPS Competencies, and we look forward to learning from and with our international colleagues as we explore how these approaches can be adapted across diverse health systems and cultural contexts.

Through case-based discussions, small-group application, and facilitated dialogue, participants will explore how competency-based education (CBE) and faculty development align to improve safety culture and clinical outcomes. Participants will apply Te4Q-informed strategies to design educational interventions that build skills in systems thinking, error recognition, and continuous improvement. Participants will leave with practical tools to implement or refine QIPS curricula, strengthen faculty capability, and integrate patient safety education into clinical workflows, positioning education as a driver of safer, higher-quality care.

• Describe current state of patient safety education in global context.
• Apply the AAMC quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) Competencies to design or enhance curricula that integrate quality improvement and patient safety across the learning continuum.
• Identify practical approaches to foster interprofessional collaboration, systems thinking, and a culture of safety through educational interventions.

Health professions educators across the continuum especially those responsible for design, delivery of curriculum and those who lead faculty development efforts.

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W1P10
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room H

AI-ENHANCED OSCE TRAINING: INTEGRATING STRUCTURED DELIBERATE PRACTICE WITH AI FOR EARLY CLINICAL EDUCATION

Sunil Venkateswaran, Shadi Gholami, Sameera Gunawardena and Sunila Sirisinghe
Malaysia

Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) remain a cornerstone of clinical assessment in healthcare education, yet many students struggle with structuring responses, articulating clinical reasoning, and performing effectively under time constraints. At the same time, the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools by students has created new opportunities for self-directed learning, alongside concerns regarding accuracy and reliability.

This interactive workshop introduces a novel, AI-enhanced OSCE training model that integrates structured frameworks, peer-assisted learning, and technology-enhanced simulation. Participants will be guided through a practical approach to OSCE performance using a structured method (Opening, Steps, Reasoning, Closure) while learning how to effectively utilise AI tools such as ChatGPT for scenario generation, practice, and feedback.

The workshop will include live demonstrations, guided practice sessions, and small-group role-play activities that simulate real OSCE stations. Participants will engage in a deliberate practice cycle involving attempt, feedback (AI and peer), reflection, and re-attempt, enabling iterative skill development in a low-risk learning environment. Emphasis will be placed on communication skills, clinical reasoning, and structured thinking under timed conditions.

In addition, the session will address the strengths and limitations of AI in medical education, highlighting the importance of combining AI-assisted learning with peer validation and structured assessment criteria. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain practical strategies to enhance OSCE performance, improve self-assessment, and apply innovative learning approaches in their own educational contexts.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Apply structured approaches to answering OSCE stations
2. Utilise AI tools (AI) to simulate OSCE scenarios and perform self-assessment
3. Demonstrate effective communication and clinical reasoning under timed conditions
4. Identify common performance gaps and apply strategies to improve scoring

This workshop is designed for undergraduate healthcare students preparing for Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), including medical, Dental, chiropractic, and allied health programmes. It is particularly suited for early- to mid-stage learners seeking to improve clinical reasoning, communication, and structured performance.

The workshop is also relevant for medical educators and clinical tutors interested in integrating artificial intelligence and simulation-based learning into clinical skills training. Participants looking for practical strategies to enhance student engagement, provide structured feedback, and improve OSCE performance will benefit from this session. No prior experience with AI tools is required.

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W1P11
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room 554

SUPERVISING YOUR DIGITAL RESIDENT: CLINICAL GOVERNANCE OF AI AGENTS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

¹Takeshi Kondo, ¹Yoshikazu Asada, ¹Yuki Kataoka, ¹Seiko Miura, ¹Akira Yamamoto and ²Daniëlle Verstegen
¹Japan and ²The Netherlands

AI agents are a new class of AI systems that can autonomously gather information, reason through clinical data, and carry out multi-step tasks without waiting for human input at each step. In medical education, such agents can independently collect patient histories, interpret findings, generate differential diagnoses, and propose management plans. As these systems become more capable, health professions educators face a pressing question: how can clinicians ensure that AI agents operate safely and appropriately in educational settings?

This workshop uses a familiar parallel: supervising an AI agent is much like supervising a junior doctor. Attending physicians routinely set learning objectives, define what trainees may and may not do independently, establish when to escalate, and review clinical decisions. The same supervisory skills apply directly to AI agent governance, giving participants an immediately recognisable framework for this emerging challenge.

The workshop opens with a live demonstration of an AI agent performing clinical reasoning. Participants then work in small groups to evaluate AI agents that have been intentionally designed with realistic errors, such as incomplete history-taking, anchoring bias, premature diagnostic closure, and failure to escalate urgent presentations. Working as supervising clinicians, participants identify these errors, then modify the agents' plain-language instructions to add safety checks, mandatory assessment items, and escalation rules. They immediately re-test their improved agents on the same scenario to verify that the safety modifications work as intended.

Throughout the workshop, participants connect their findings to established frameworks for AI competency in healthcare, including tiered governance models and human-in-the-loop principles. Participants will leave with a concrete understanding of how their clinical expertise is essential to making AI agents safer, and how this supervisory role extends well beyond efficiency into the kind of wisdom that working with imperfect systems demands.

Upon completion, participants will be able to:

1. Explain how AI agents differ from conventional chatbots and why autonomous clinical reasoning requires human oversight
2. Identify clinical reasoning errors in AI agent outputs, including biased information gathering, premature closure, and inappropriate management recommendations
3. Modify AI agent instructions in plain language to add safety boundaries, escalation criteria, and requirements for expressing uncertainty
4. Test whether safety improvements hold up across different clinical scenarios
5. Describe the role of health professions educators in the collaborative design and ongoing governance of AI agents

This workshop is designed for medical educators, clinical supervisors, faculty developers, curriculum designers, and programme directors who want to understand how their clinical and educational expertise can shape the governance of AI agents. No programming or technical knowledge is required. Participants should have basic familiarity with AI chatbots (e.g. having used a web-based AI assistant) and an interest in ensuring that AI systems used in medical education are safe, appropriate, and aligned with sound educational principles.

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W1P12
Wednesday 13th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room 555

BEYOND UNCERTAINTY TOLERANCE: DEVELOPING EDUCATOR CAPACITY THROUGH UNCERTAINTY LITERACY IN CLINICAL EDUCATION

Winnie Teo Li-Lian, Aaron Ang and Chiang Hui Ling Michelle
Singapore

Uncertainty is intrinsic to medical practice, yet medical education often treats it as an individual lack to be managed through increasing learners’ tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. While uncertainty tolerance (UT) has been associated with learner well-being and clinical decision-making, this framing risks misdiagnosing the problem. Learners’ distress, avoidance, or premature closure frequently represent adaptive responses to epistemic, relational, ethical, and hierarchical uncertainty embedded within clinical training environments. Framing these responses as low tolerance shifts responsibility onto individual learners and obscures the educational conditions that shape how uncertainty is encountered and managed. This workshop introduces uncertainty literacy (UL) as an alternative educational orientation. Instead of asking learners to tolerate uncertainty, uncertainty literacy equips educators to recognise how uncertainty arises in clinical education, how it is experienced by learners, and how educators’ own responses can either foreclose or support productive engagement with uncertainty.

The workshop is structured around the CRISP framework (Communication, Recognition, Interpretation, Strategy, and Positioning), a humanities and social science informed approach grounded in epistemology, hermeneutics, professional identity formation, and eudaimonic models of well-being. The session comprises a didactic introduction to the conceptual development of Uncertainty Literacy and the CRISP framework and case analysis of educator-learner interactions where uncertainty is silenced, displaced, or mismanaged. The workshop examines strategies for recognising and responding to learner uncertainty, fostering effective communication during supervision and feedback, and applying the CRISP framework to support learning in uncertain clinical and educational contexts. Participants will also identify practical approaches to integrating these principles into their own teaching practice.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Identify epistemic, structural, and relational sources of learner uncertainty in clinical settings
2. Recognise how educator responses shape learners’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioural engagement with uncertainty
3. Foster context-sensitive engagement with uncertainty without rewarding performative certainty.

Educators involved in post-graduate medical education, including those responsible for supervision, assessment, and feedback.

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W2A1
Thursday 14th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room C-1

CLOSING THE PRACTICE GAP: USING RUBRIC-ALIGNED AI PATIENTS TO SCALE COMPETENCY-BASED HISTORY TAKING PRACTICE AND REVEAL COHORT-WIDE LEARNING GAPS

Noof Abdullah Saad Shaif, Gene Chan, Nathasha Luke, Celestial Therese Yap Suen Mei and Yuen Ka Hei Karina
Singapore

In large health professions cohorts, equitable access to early clinical practice remains a persistent challenge. Resource and faculty constraints limit standardised patient programmes to the repeated, low-stakes practice students need for skills development. Generative AI offers a scalable solution, but many AI patient activities are not grounded in explicit competency frameworks, resulting in inconsistent case behaviour and feedback that is often too generic to support learning. This workshop moves beyond AI novelty with a rubric-first design approach, developed and piloted with 287 Phase 1 MBBS students, that functions both as a student-facing practice resource and a tutor-facing tool for identifying cohort-wide learning gaps.

Participants will learn to translate an existing history-taking rubric into a structured AI patient case that elicits key history domains, models appropriate communication cues, and provides criterion-referenced feedback. This workshop introduces the educational rationale for competency-aligned simulation and the use of AI patients to support clinical skills training. Participants will learn how to translate clinical skill checklists into structured AI patient instructions, align AI interactions with competency rubrics, and design AI patient cases that provide meaningful feedback. The workshop will also explore how AI-generated interaction data can be used to identify common learner errors, inform teaching strategies, and support curriculum improvement. Practical considerations for implementing AI patients in health professions education will also be discussed.

The workshop extends opportunities for practice, preparation, and remediation between supervised standardised patient sessions. Participants will leave with a draft competency-aligned case blueprint, a reusable prompt scaffold, and a teaching insight framework, applicable within their own institutional teaching contexts.

This workshop is designed to help participants:

1. Translate a history-taking rubric into structured AI patient instructions and criterion-referenced feedback.
2. Refine prompt scaffolds to improve consistency, alignment, and feedback usefulness across learners.
3. Interpret AI interaction data through a teacher-facing lens to identify cohort-wide learning gaps and inform teaching and curriculum improvement.

This session is essential for clinical educators, simulation leads, and curriculum designers facing the "scaling challenge" in health professions education. It is particularly relevant for those managing large undergraduate or foundation-year cohorts where individualised tutor and standardised patient feedback are limited. We welcome participants interested in moving beyond AI experimentation toward sustainable, evidence-based integration. No programming or technical expertise is required; the focus is on pedagogical design and instructional leadership.

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W2A2
Thursday 14th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room C-2

PROGRAMMATIC ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING: EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY AND ADAPTABILITY IN CLINICAL REASONING

¹Dario Torre, ²Eric Holmboe and ³Lyuba Konopasek
¹Italy, ²United States of America and ³Singapore

Programmatic Assessment for Learning (PAL) offers a longitudinal and feedback-rich framework that supports learner development and defensible decision-making. This workshop reframes assessment not as a pursuit of precision or efficiency based on a single measurement, but as a developmental process that embraces uncertainty, complexity, and the dynamic and evolving nature of clinical reasoning. Clinical reasoning is positioned as a complex, context-dependent competency cultivated through iterative learning, reflection, and engagement with ambiguity.

PAL emphasises constructive alignment between learning and assessment within a dynamic, interconnected system, where meaningful learning emerges from the integration of multiple data points over time. This workshop explores three interrelated dimensions: (1) assessment as a complex adaptive system; (2) the centrality of uncertainty, where learners operate at the edge of their current capabilities and where challenge, partial understanding, and error become drivers of growth and adaptability; and (3) global contextualisation, emphasising transferability and the need to adapt PAL to diverse cultural, institutional, and regulatory environments. Participants will engage in collaborative design activities using a structured PAL Design Map to analyse contextual elements and system dynamics and align them with PAL principles.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Explain how Programmatic Assessment for Learning (PAL) reframes assessment as a developmental, feedback-driven system that embraces uncertainty and supports learning beyond efficiency.
2. Design a context-sensitive assessment approach for clinical reasoning that promotes adaptability, learner agency, and growth through coaching and feedback.
3. Apply the PAL Design Map to align assessment, curriculum, and contextual factors, enabling implementation that is transferable and adaptable across diverse educational environments.
4. Discuss the growing role of AI in data gathering, analysis, narrative aggregation, meaning-making, and individualised feedback in implementation of PAL.

Medical and health-professions educators, curriculum and assessment leaders, and educational researchers involved in competency-based education, systems design, or the assessment of clinical reasoning.

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W2A3
Thursday 14th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room G

PLAYING TO UNDERSTAND: GAME-BASED LEARNING FOR SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

Pauline Luk, Justin Chan Yik Hin, Julie Chen, Khong Mei Li and Ng Hei Yue Hayley
Hong Kong S.A.R.

Health inequalities are pervasive yet often remain abstract in medical education, where they may be marginalised or omitted from curricula. Learners may know definitions and statistics but still struggle to grasp how policy, stigma, socioeconomic status, and structural forces intersect in real people’s lives. To address this, we developed HealthSeekers, a serious board game co-created by students and teachers at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. Grounded in the social determinants of health model, the game highlights that challenges faced by vulnerable populations extend beyond healthcare access to include housing, education, employment, social exclusion, and environmental conditions.

Drawing on interviews with community members experiencing disadvantage, HealthSeekers immerses players in constrained, realistic scenarios that surface moral dilemmas, emotional responses, and implicit biases often overlooked in traditional teaching. The workshop also demonstrated an educational approach informed by self-determination theory: gameplay and co-creation activities were deliberately structured to enhance autonomy (choice over actions), competence (progressive challenge with feedback), and relatedness (collaborative play and reflection), thereby fostering intrinsic motivation for learning about health equity.

In this workshop, participants engaged in multimodal activities built around real cases, beginning with short documentaries that make visible the everyday struggles of marginalised groups. They then assumed roles of characters from disadvantaged backgrounds, making difficult decisions about health, finances, and social relationships under resource constraints. In the second part, participants co-created new characters and scenarios reflecting their own contexts, tested these through play, and discussed how the game can be integrated into learner-centred curricula.

By the end, participants had identified limitations of conventional teaching on health inequalities and explored practical strategies to embed gamified, reflective activities on health equity in their educational and professional practice.

By the end of this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:

• Describe key challenges in teaching health inequalities through traditional, lecture-based methods.
• Experience, through gameplay, how social position and structural factors shape health choices and outcomes.
• Reflect on personal assumptions, biases and emotional responses to vulnerable patients’ situations.
• Co-create game characters and scenarios that represent local contexts of health inequity.
• Identify concrete strategies to integrate serious games and learner-centred methods into their own teaching on health equity.

Medical and health professions educators, curriculum designers and educational leaders interested in health inequalities, social determinants of health, medical humanities, or gamification; and residents/senior students involved in teaching or facilitating learning about health equity and patient centred care.

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W2A4
Thursday 14th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room H

HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - EDUCATORS NOT REQUIRED

Wong Teck-Yee and Theophilia Yong
Singapore

If AI can generate content, coach learners, simulate practice, assess performance, and analyse outcomes at scale, what role does humans have in Health Professions (HP) teaching?

This workshop begins with the premise that “human educators are redundant in the future”. This allows participants to discuss and challenge assumptions about the value of the educator in the age of AI.

Participants will be guided through a structured discussion that identifies the crucial work of educators and translates it into future-ready role blueprints.

Principles are anchored in the concept of productive struggle, desirable difficulties, cognitive apprenticeship, and uncertainty tolerance leading to adaptive expertise. The session is designed to be pragmatic, as participants will leave with a concise educator job description adaptable to their professional and local context.

Structure of Workshop:

1. Presentation
   a. Address by “Dean of the School of Tomorrow” arguing that educators are unnecessary.
2. Breakout groups
   b. Psychological safety is established, and one table is tasked with defending this claim while others argue for retaining educators’ roles.
3. Group discussion and presentation (1)
   c. Discussion and presentation articulating the unique value of human educators.
4. Demonstration on potential of AI in HP education
   d. A brief demonstration of current AI educational capabilities to highlight possibilities of AI in HP education.
5. Group discussion and presentation (2)
   e. Groups co-author a future-ready educator job description, clarifying responsibilities, boundaries with AI and safeguards.

Facilitators will explicitly connect design decisions to principles of productive struggle, desirable difficulties, cognitive apprenticeship, uncertainty tolerance, adaptive expertise.

The session concludes with participants articulating an individual commitment to change perception and behaviour in their own professional and local settings.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to articulate where AI should substitute, augment, or be constrained, and defend what remains distinctly human in education. They will map theory-informed design principles and produce a concise, adaptable job description defining the educator’s role in an AI-future learning environment.

Course and assessment leads, clerkship and rotation directors, programme directors, and faculty-development educators responsible for curriculum, assessment, or accreditation decisions. Colleagues in educational quality, digital learning, and AI-in-education roles will also benefit.

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W2A5
Thursday 14th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room 554

THE WISDOM OF IMPERFECT FEEDBACK: DEVELOPING FEEDBACK LITERACY IN HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

Elaine Tan Ching Ching, Gan Han Nee, Yvonne Goh Guat Keng and Rachelle Lim Hao Yu
Singapore

Feedback in health professions education has traditionally been framed as a skill of delivery, with emphasis on providing comments that are clear, timely, and constructive. Yet this transmission-oriented view does not fully explain why feedback often fails to influence learning meaningfully. Contemporary scholarship increasingly conceptualises feedback as a relational, dialogic, and socially situated process, in which learning depends not only on the quality of comments given, but also on the learner’s and educator’s capacity to receive, interpret, question, and use feedback productively.

This workshop focuses on two comparatively neglected aspects of feedback practice: receiving feedback and eliciting feedback. These capabilities are central to feedback literacy, yet are often overlooked in faculty development and learner preparation. In authentic educational settings, feedback is rarely complete, neutral, or efficient. It is shaped by hierarchy, trust, identity, affect, and psychological safety. Learners and educators must therefore work with feedback that may be ambiguous, uncomfortable, or difficult to operationalise.

Through brief conceptual framing, facilitated discussion, role-play, and reflective debrief, participants will examine feedback beyond technique alone. They will explore how defensiveness, uncertainty, power relations, and relational context influence feedback uptake, and how educators can foster more dialogic and agentic feedback practices. Participants will leave with a more nuanced understanding of feedback as a bidirectional educational practice, together with practical strategies to strengthen feedback literacy, learner agency, and feedback culture within health professions education.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to analyse feedback through the lens of feedback literacy and relational pedagogy; discuss how hierarchy, affect, trust, and psychological safety shape feedback engagement; demonstrate strategies for receiving feedback with openness and reflexivity; apply approaches to elicit clearer and more actionable feedback; and identify practical ways to strengthen learner agency and feedback culture within their own educational settings.

This workshop is intended for health professions educators involved in teaching, supervision, coaching, assessment, or faculty development across undergraduate, postgraduate, simulation, and workplace-based learning settings. It will be relevant to clinical teachers, residency faculty, preceptors, programme directors, interprofessional educators, and faculty developers seeking a more scholarly and practice-informed understanding of feedback. It will be particularly useful for those interested in feedback literacy, learner agency, psychological safety, and the development of more dialogic, relationship-centred feedback cultures.

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W2A6
Thursday 14th January 2027, 9.00am – 10.30am | Room 555

DESIGN A FLOURISHING MEDICAL CAREER AND LIFE - ASSESS, BALANCE, AND GROW WITH GOALS AND ACTION STEPS FOR WELL-BEING

Marion McCrary
United States of America

When we embark on a career in medicine, we often dream about what it will look like at different stages in the future. We are excited and hopeful. However, if the path is not perfectly linear, we often feel like we failed. Other times, we are lost and misaligned from what made us decide to be a physician initially. Lastly, we can fail to attend to the journey along the way and miss out on the joys of our daily life.

During this session, attendees will reflect, determine what is right for them, and implement balance and focus.

In the first half of the workshop, participants will perform a self-assessment to determine where they are currently flourishing and where there may be opportunity to initiate a change. We will examine multiple aspects of personalised well-being through analysis of the attendee’s individual values, strengths, and motivations. This clarity is foundational to create a career where one feels they truly belong and are thriving. In the second half of the workshop, participants will explore several positive psychology concepts and frameworks to create a medical practice that is fulfilling. This may involve a mindset shift. As we conclude, physicians and medical students will determine a series of goals and action steps to help move towards a higher state of flourishing.

Envisioning our dreams for the future is empowering and taking the steps to achieve them builds self-efficacy. We must consistently incorporate self-compassion, boundaries, and self-care alongside other professional values. There are many opportunities to learn from our own experience and the wisdom of others.

At the end of this session, participants will have tools to understand what they need to flourish and intentionally design their career with confidence. They can use these skills to adjust along the way as they grow.

1. Assess where you currently spend your energy and time to determine if that aligns with the crucial components of flourishing that are unique to you.
2. Explore what matters most via clarification of values and priorities and understand how this supports well-being. Understand what holds you back and how to move around any barriers.
3. Utilise proven positive psychology frameworks to craft a vision for your professional and personal legacy.
4. Set a series of goals and action steps that move you towards where you want to be.

Medical students, physicians in training, and physicians in practice can all benefit from this investment in self-assessment and skill building. A person at any stage of their career can benefit from this workshop and make a change in their professional practice at any point along their career.

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W2A7
Thursday 14th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room C-1

THE WISDOM OF IMPERFECTION: WORKING MINDFULLY WITH UNCERTAINTY AND ERROR IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

¹Michael Krasner, ¹Patricia Luck, ²Celestial Therese Yap Suen Mei and ²Mabel Yap
¹United States of America and ²Singapore

Healthcare education is increasingly shaped by pressures for efficiency, productivity and measurable outcomes. Yet uncertainty and error remain intrinsic to medical practice. When these realities are suppressed rather than explored, they contribute to shame, defensive practice, burnout, and diminished learning cultures.

This interactive pre-conference workshop introduces a Flourishing in Medicine (FIM) approach for engaging with uncertainty and error as developmental opportunities rather than personal failures. Grounded in contemplative practice, narrative medicine, appreciative inquiry, and relationship-centred care, FIM has demonstrated sustainable improvements in clinician wellbeing, empathy, teamwork, and patient-centred care across global contexts.

The workshop opens with structured “salon-style” dialogues in which participants engage in guided conversations around imperfection, uncertainty, and vulnerability in their own professional lives. A subsequent brief interactive overview introduces the core mindful awareness qualities of attentive observation, critical curiosity, beginner’s mind, and presence.

The second half of the workshop will further integrate the themes of uncertainty and medical error. Drawing from clinical scenarios and research on cognitive bias and the “second victim” phenomenon, participants explore how tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, and the capacity to leverage mindful awareness qualities and skills, can mitigate cognitive error while fostering psychological safety. Using structured dyadic narrative dialogues, participants will examine personal experiences of uncertainty and error and identify strengths, capacities, and system-level implications.

Participants will leave with applicable knowledge and practical strategies to cultivate cultures of learning beyond efficiency and encourage developing clinical environments where imperfection becomes a source of wisdom, growth, and connection for both students and faculty.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe how uncertainty and error function as inherent and educationally generative aspects of clinical practice.
2. Apply mindful awareness qualities (attentive observation, curiosity, beginner’s mind, presence) to clinical uncertainty and error.
3. Facilitate narrative and appreciative dialogues that transform shame and defensiveness into learning and growth.
4. Identify practical strategies to strengthen psychological safety and wellbeing in medical education environments.

This workshop is designed for medical educators, clinical supervisors, faculty developers, student affairs leaders, healthcare educators, and learners and trainees across undergraduate, graduate, and continuing professional development settings. It will be particularly valuable for those concerned with learner, trainees, and faculty wellbeing, psychological safety, professionalism, remediation strategies, or error disclosure education. No prior experience with mindfulness is required. Participants seeking practical, relationally grounded strategies to address burnout, shame culture, uncertainty, and defensive practice in medical education will find this workshop especially relevant.

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W2A8
Thursday 14th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room C-2

EVALUATING AND MITIGATING ASSESSMENT BIAS IN THE ERA OF TECHNOLOGY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Stefanie Sebok-Syer, Eric Holmboe, Jung Kim and Lyuba Konopasek
United States of America

Healthcare education is increasingly shaped by pressures for efficiency, productivity and measurable outcomes. Yet uncertainty and error remain intrinsic to medical practice. When these realities are suppressed rather than explored, they contribute to shame, defensive practice, burnout, and diminished learning cultures.

This interactive pre-conference workshop introduces a Flourishing in Medicine (FIM) approach for engaging with uncertainty and error as developmental opportunities rather than personal failures. Grounded in contemplative practice, narrative medicine, appreciative inquiry, and relationship-centred care, FIM has demonstrated sustainable improvements in clinician wellbeing, empathy, teamwork, and patient-centred care across global contexts.

The workshop opens with structured “salon-style” dialogues in which participants engage in guided conversations around imperfection, uncertainty, and vulnerability in their own professional lives. A subsequent brief interactive overview introduces the core mindful awareness qualities of attentive observation, critical curiosity, beginner’s mind, and presence.

The second half of the workshop will further integrate the themes of uncertainty and medical error. Drawing from clinical scenarios and research on cognitive bias and the “second victim” phenomenon, participants explore how tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, and the capacity to leverage mindful awareness qualities and skills, can mitigate cognitive error while fostering psychological safety. Using structured dyadic narrative dialogues, participants will examine personal experiences of uncertainty and error and identify strengths, capacities, and system-level implications.

Participants will leave with applicable knowledge and practical strategies to cultivate cultures of learning beyond efficiency and encourage developing clinical environments where imperfection becomes a source of wisdom, growth, and connection for both students and faculty.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe how uncertainty and error function as inherent and educationally generative aspects of clinical practice.
2. Apply mindful awareness qualities (attentive observation, curiosity, beginner’s mind, presence) to clinical uncertainty and error.
3. Facilitate narrative and appreciative dialogues that transform shame and defensiveness into learning and growth.
4. Identify practical strategies to strengthen psychological safety and wellbeing in medical education environments.

This workshop is designed for medical educators, clinical supervisors, faculty developers, student affairs leaders, healthcare educators, and learners and trainees across undergraduate, graduate, and continuing professional development settings. It will be particularly valuable for those concerned with learner, trainees, and faculty wellbeing, psychological safety, professionalism, remediation strategies, or error disclosure education. No prior experience with mindfulness is required. Participants seeking practical, relationally grounded strategies to address burnout, shame culture, uncertainty, and defensive practice in medical education will find this workshop especially relevant.

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W2A9
Thursday 14th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room G

BEYOND EFFICIENCY: CO-CREATING CLINICAL EDUCATION THROUGH PATIENT AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

¹Sophie Park and ²Jo-Anne Manski-Nankervis
¹United Kingdom and ²Singapore

Patient and public involvement (PPI) is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of person-centred health professions education. However, meaningful engagement with patients as partners often disrupts traditional notions of efficiency, control and standardisation in teaching. This workshop positions such disruption as a form of productive “imperfection” that enhances learning and the social accountability of clinical practice.

Co-facilitated by Sophie Park (UK) and Jo-Anne Manski-Nankervis (Singapore), this highly interactive workshop draws on their cross-institutional research and practice in PPI across undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. It offers an innovative reframing of PPI as a pedagogical approach that intentionally embraces unpredictability, diverse perspectives, and authentic patient voice to deepen learning.

Participants will engage in a structured sequence of activities:

• A brief evidence-informed overview of PPI and its educational impact;
• Small-group analysis of real case studies where PPI has enhanced education practice; and
• A facilitated co-design exercise in which participants redesign a teaching or assessment activity to integrate meaningful PPI.

The workshop emphasises active participation, peer learning, and adaptation to participants’ contexts. Facilitators will guide discussion on practical implementation, including managing power dynamics, ensuring psychological safety, and addressing logistical and ethical considerations. Participants will be invited to consider how to integrate and implement PPI collaboration into various stages of learning e.g. direct knowledge exchange, development of resources, or educational strategy. Examples from diverse contexts will support transferability across disciplines and settings.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a concrete, adaptable plan for integrating PPI into their own educational practice. This workshop focuses on co-creation, interactivity, and impact through actionable outputs that can be implemented across health professions education contexts.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe how uncertainty and error function as inherent and educationally generative aspects of clinical practice.
2. Apply mindful awareness qualities (attentive observation, curiosity, beginner’s mind, presence) to clinical uncertainty and error.
3. Facilitate narrative and appreciative dialogues that transform shame and defensiveness into learning and growth.
4. Identify practical strategies to strengthen psychological safety and wellbeing in medical education environments.

This workshop is designed for health professions educators across medicine, nursing, and allied health who are interested in enhancing person-centred education through innovative approaches. It is particularly relevant for clinical teachers, curriculum designers, and faculty developers seeking to integrate authentic patient perspectives into teaching and assessment. The session will also benefit educational leaders aiming to promote inclusive and participatory practices within their institutions. Suitable for both beginners and those with prior experience in PPI, the workshop offers practical strategies transferable across diverse educational contexts. Participants will gain most by bringing a teaching activity they wish to develop.

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W2A10
Thursday 14th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room H

USING LIGHT AND SHADOW FOR CLINICAL EDUCATION: THE DETERIORATING PATIENT SITUATION “LOW-TECH” SIMULATION

¹Osamu Nomura, ²Khoa Duong and ²Jeffrey Wiseman
¹Japan and ²Canada

Anchored to APMEC 2027’s theme, this workshop embraces the wisdom of imperfection through Deteriorating Patient Simulation (DPS) — a realistic, low technology approach that recreates evolving instability to teach diagnostic reasoning, prioritisation, escalation, and handover in time pressured contexts. DPS demonstrates that educational design — not equipment — drives learning, making it feasible “anywhere, anytime” and well suited for resource limited or opportunistic teaching.

Participants first experience a pre-prepared DPS scenario, taking roles as learners or observers to surface authentic uncertainty, cognitive load, and emotional demands of acute care. Guided debriefing translates these experiences into pedagogical priorities — psychological safety, productive struggle, and reflective debriefing — while highlighting DPS design principles such as serious game, narrative design model, and dynamic case progression.

Participants then work in small groups to design and deliver their own DPS scenarios aligned with their educational goals, learner levels, and contexts. They are encouraged to extend DPS to other competencies, such as communication (e.g., a scenario in which interaction with a bisexual patient deteriorates when sexual orientation and lived experiences are not recognised). Scenarios are run for the group, followed by collective debriefing focused on both teaching-learning experiences and educational designs.

Practical tips include selecting plausible deterioration pathways; scripting “if–then” changes; facilitating think aloud reasoning; using visible case records to externalise thinking; and conducting focused debriefs. Feasibility, equity, and alignment with high fidelity simulation are also addressed.

By the end of the workshop, participants leave with a DPS scenario, facilitation plan, and debrief guide ready for use and refinement, along with design principles that embrace authenticity and use uncertainty and imperfection as engines for learning.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Explain the rationale, structure, and educational foundations of the Deteriorating Patient Simulation.
• Identify contexts where DPS adds value and complements other simulation modalities.
• Design and demonstrate a DPS scenario tailored to their discipline, learner levels, and group sizes.
• Facilitate psychologically safe think aloud performance and conduct reflective debriefs that transform error into learning.
• Anticipate feasibility challenges and implement tips, issues, priorities, and strategies to sustain DPS in diverse settings

Health professions educators, clinical teachers, faculty developers, simulationists, programme leaders, and interprofessional clinicians who teach clinical reasoning, acute care, or decision making under pressure. The session is especially relevant for teams seeking high impact, low technology approaches, those in resource limited environments, and educators aiming to embed reflection, psychological safety, and adaptive expertise in everyday teaching. No prior simulation experience is required — participants should come ready to prototype a DPS for their own context and leave with a run ready scenario and debrief guide.

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W2A11
Thursday 14th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room 554

HOW TO WRITE A HIGH-QUALITY ABSTRACT FOR A CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

¹Peter GM de Jong and ²Julie Hewett
¹The Netherlands and ²United States of America

Scholarly work is essential for health profession educators to support programme evaluation, to develop their research skills, and for their career advancement through promotion and tenure. Disseminating the outcomes of scholarly research typically occurs via conference abstracts and journal articles, both of which require strong writing skills to maximise the chances to be accepted. Many scholars find it challenging to craft clear, concise, and compelling abstracts. Effective writing must balance scientific rigor with clarity and accessibility for the intended audience while also aligning with the unique expectations of specific conferences or journals.

This interactive workshop offers practical strategies to improve the quality of abstracts for conferences. Poor-quality titles and abstract bodies are the most common causes for rejection. After all, for reviewers it is crucial to quickly grasp the background, purpose, methodology, results, and significance of the work being presented. Therefore, the facilitators will focus on how to develop a clear and engaging abstract with a strong title. Through small-group exercises, attendees will practice to enhance their skills in this area.

This workshop provides participants with a unique opportunity to learn from two seasoned professionals with extensive experience in conference planning and journal publishing. Julie Hewett, a Certified Meeting Professional, brings over 25 years of expertise in organising academic conferences and abstract selections. Peter de Jong has served as Editor-in-Chief of one of the leading journals in health professions education for over 14 years, and has experience in overseeing the abstract review process for several conferences. Together, they will share practical strategies and inside knowledge to help participants refine their titles and abstracts, increasing the likelihood of abstract acceptance.

At the end of the workshop the participants will know more about how to develop a high-quality abstract for a conference presentation. They will know more about external factors to take into consideration and will have a better insight in what reviewers are looking for when reading the abstract.

The workshop is designed for early and mid-career scholars in health professions education who seek to strengthen their academic writing abilities regarding abstracts. Participants are invited to bring an abstract for review by their peers in the workshop.

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W2A12
Thursday 14th January 2027, 11.00am – 12.30pm | Room 555

TRANSFERABILITY IN THREE DIMENSIONS (3D): A WORKSHOP PRESENTING STRATEGIES TO DISCUSS THE TRANSFERABILITY OF YOUR QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Renée Stalmeijer and Emmaline Brouwer
The Netherlands

Transferability is commonly mentioned as a quality criterion for qualitative research, yet many researchers find the concept perplexing and are unsure how to discuss the transferability of their work. As reviewers and PhD and Master theses supervisors, we frequently see authors conflating transferability with generalisability, as evident in an emphasis on contextual or sample limitations.

In this workshop, we aim to dispel common misconceptions about transferability by presenting a three-dimensional view of the concept and offering concrete examples of how to enact and represent each dimension in qualitative research. The three dimensions include: applicability (the relevance or fit of findings to other cases or contexts), resonance (the affective connection between participants’ experiences and the research audience), and theoretical engagement (the development, critique, or enhancement of concepts and theories).

Importantly, we position transferability not merely as a reporting criterion, but as a strategy for enhancing the broader impact of qualitative research. By explicitly considering transferability throughout the research process, researchers can design studies, articulate findings, and engage with theory in ways that extend the reach of their work beyond the immediate study context.

During this interactive workshop, didactic presentations will be interleaved with small group discussions and independent thinking/writing time. We will share examples and strategies for each dimension from the standpoint of both researcher and reader/reviewer of qualitative research. Participants will then have opportunities to reflect on and apply these dimensions to their own projects, with a particular focus on how deliberate attention to transferability can strengthen the potential impact and relevance of their work across diverse contexts.

Participants will be able to:

• Explain transferability as applicability, resonance, theoretical engagement to a colleague
• Use these dimensions when reviewing qualitative research
• Engage with these dimensions when planning, conducing, and writing up qualitative research

The workshop is designed for researchers with some knowledge of and experience with qualitative methodology and academic writing. Researchers can use the workshop to plan strategies for current or upcoming qualitative research projects; experienced researchers can benefit from new ways of conceptualising and applying transferability in their research.

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W2P1
Thursday 14th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room C-1

ROOM FOR WONDER: EXPLORING HOW ART MUSEUM-BASED ACTIVITIES INVITE CURIOSITY, DIALOGUE, AND COMFORT WITH UNCERTAINTY IN HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

¹Margaret Chisolm, ¹Kamna Balhara, ²Hirohisa Fujikawa, ³Liu Tzu-Hung (Leon), ¹Mariah Robertson and ⁴Mabel Yap
¹United States of America, ²Japan, ³Taiwan and ⁴Singapore

Background: Art museum-based learning activities invite slow looking, curiosity, and psychologically safe dialogue, conditions that support learning beyond efficiency. Works of art can function as “third things” that create a shared space for health professionals to explore, share, and understand emotions or ideas indirectly. Art-based education often prioritises the process of interpretation and dialogue, versus demanding that participants arrive at a single “right” answer. Art museum-based pedagogy can thus cultivate empathy, observation, communication, and tolerance for ambiguity, while inviting participants to share their ideas, doubts, and cognitive processes. Building on international experience, this 1.5-hour workshop will immerse participants in museum-based activities that reframe teaching and learning in health professions education (HPE) and foster reflective, relational practice.

Structure of workshop:

1. Large group welcome, community building, and expectation-setting for psychological safety (10 minutes);
2. Open-ended, facilitated discussion of artwork in a virtual reality gallery using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), followed by small group debriefs focusing on facilitation techniques, uncertainty, and clinical relevance of VTS (40 minutes);
3. Personal Responses Tours with small group debriefs on personal values, identity, professional meaning-making (25 minutes);
4. Large group synthesis and action planning: facilitator techniques, inclusive engagement, HPE application, and sharing of how they might translate these museum-based experiences to their own courses and settings (15 minutes).

This workshop will require participants to bring their own laptops and headphones to interact with the virtual reality gallery. Although this workshop will not be held in an art museum, workshop activities will include works from local museums, including the: 1) Kyoto National Museum, 2) National Museum of Modern Art, and 3) Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art. Participants will leave with a "to-go" guide that includes reflection prompts and activities with which to explore these local art museums following the workshop, either individually or in small groups.

Participants will:

1. Experience two art museum-based learning activities (Visual Thinking Strategies and Personal Responses Tour), with a focus on slow looking and collaborative meaning making;
2. Identify skills and attitudes cultivated through museum-based pedagogy (e.g., empathy, observation, communication, tolerance for ambiguity), whether these activities are conducted in museums, virtual reality galleries, classrooms, or online;
3. Explore strategies for psychological safety.

Educators, clinicians, and learners interested in experiencing museum-based pedagogy and translating insights into their health professions education contexts. No prior arts or museum experience required. This is an introductory workshop open to all levels of participants.

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W2P2
Thursday 14th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room C-2

SELECTING, TRAINING, AND RETAINING FUTURE DOCTORS: ALIGNING ADMISSIONS, CURRICULA AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY TO MEET POPULATION NEED

Jack Haywood and Emma Keeling
United Kingdom

Predicting whether medical school applicants will ultimately achieve desired graduate outcomes is challenging, particularly given the 4–6 years of medical education and professional development that follow selection. During this time, curricula significantly influence the knowledge, values, and professional identities that students form. As medical schools increasingly embrace social accountability - aligning education with community needs, enhancing population health, and preparing graduates to serve local and underserved populations - there is growing recognition that admissions and curricula must work in tandem rather than as parallel processes.

Nonetheless, few institutions have meaningfully aligned selection mechanisms, curriculum design, and socially accountable graduate outcomes to achieve this.

This workshop introduces participants to social accountability as a conceptual foundation for admissions and curriculum design. Drawing on international case studies, we will explore a Selection–Curriculum–Socially Accountable Graduate Outcomes framework, examining how institutions can identify applicants whose qualities and motivations support their mission, and how curricula can strengthen, refine, or reshape these selection priorities over time. Using principles such as Biggs’ Constructive Alignment, participants will interrogate how educational design choices can meaningfully influence both selection practices and intended graduate outcomes.

A key focus of the workshop will be the development of a Selection–Curriculum Alignment Design Map: a practical tool that helps participants visualise, critique, and redesign the relationships between admissions criteria, curricular structures, learning experiences, and socially accountable graduate capabilities. Through facilitated small group activities, participants will apply the tool to their own contexts, identify gaps, and generate actionable strategies.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a concrete, customisable design map and a set of evidence informed principles to guide alignment between selection, curriculum design, and socially accountable graduate outcomes.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Explain the core principles of social accountability and their implications for medical school selection and curriculum design.
2. Analyse case studies to identify alignment and misalignment between admissions processes, curricular structures, and socially accountable graduate outcomes.
3. Use a Selection–Curriculum Alignment Design Map to evaluate their own institutional practices.
4. Develop actionable strategies to strengthen alignment between selection criteria, learning experiences, and intended graduate capabilities.
5. Collaboratively reflect on challenges and opportunities in implementing socially accountable educational models across diverse contexts.

This workshop is designed for educators, admissions leads, curriculum designers, and programme directors seeking practical ways to strengthen alignment between student selection, curricula, and socially accountable training outcomes. It will be valuable for colleagues from new and established medical schools, as well as those working in widening participation, community engagement, or educational leadership. Participants of any level of expertise are welcome as we will lay the foundations at the beginning of the session.

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W2P3
Thursday 14th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room G

GENERALISM: A PEDAGOGY FOR CREATING, INTEGRATING AND HOLDING PRODUCTIVE UNCERTAINTY AND HUMANITY WITHIN CLINICAL EDUCATION

Sophie Park and Lindsey Pope
United Kingdom

Healthcare and clinical education are increasingly shaped by pressures towards efficiency, standardisation, and algorithmic decision-making. Growing integration of artificial intelligence has amplified these trends, focusing only on ‘quantifiable uncertainty’ (where more data can provide solutions), rather than ‘unquantifiable uncertainty’ (where human and situational judgement is required). While these developments offer important benefits, they risk narrowing spaces for interpretive judgement, relational care, and “human intelligence” in clinical practice. This workshop responds by positioning generalism as a critical educational strategy for sustaining “productive uncertainty” in learning and practice. Creating spaces for this learning and application in practice are an urgent moral imperative at this time of rapid AI evolution. Drawing on the work of Sophie Park and Lindsey Pope, this session reframes generalism as a form of adaptive, integrative, and interpretive expertise. Contemporary research highlights generalism as involving dynamic, non-linear, and co-constructed approaches to care, where knowledge is responsive to patient context and uncertainty is actively engaged rather than eliminated.

This highly interactive workshop will engage participants through: • a brief provocation contrasting Don Berwick’s “era 2” standardisation with generalist approaches to care and learning; • facilitated small-group exploration of clinical and educational scenarios characterised by uncertainty; and • a co-design activity in which participants create learning experiences that intentionally cultivate “productive uncertainty” and support moments to develop and apply human intelligence.

Participants will critically examine how educational practices - such as competency frameworks, assessment structures, and AI-supported tools - may inadvertently constrain or enable generalist ways of thinking. Facilitators will guide discussion on how to design curricula and learning environments that hold spaces for ambiguity, relational understanding, and adaptive expertise.

By foregrounding generalism as a pedagogy, this workshop offers an innovative, practice-oriented response to the conference theme, with clear strategies for implementation across diverse educational contexts.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Describe generalism as an adaptive, integrative, and interpretive form of clinical expertise
• Analyse how standardisation and AI may constrain opportunities for learning through uncertainty
• Explain the concept of “productive uncertainty” and its role in developing clinical judgement and human intelligence
• Critically reflect on how current educational practices support or limit generalist learning
• Design a learning activity or curricular intervention that fosters generalist approaches and embraces uncertainty

This workshop is intended for health professions educators, clinical teachers, and curriculum leaders interested in advancing educational approaches that support complexity, uncertainty, and person-centred care. It will be particularly relevant for those involved in curriculum design, assessment, and faculty development across undergraduate and postgraduate settings. Educators working in generalist disciplines (e.g. primary care, general internal medicine) as well as specialist fields seeking to incorporate generalist principles will benefit. The session is also suited to those exploring the implications of AI and standardisation for education and practice. Participants can bring a teaching or curriculum example for redesign.

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W2P4
Thursday 14th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room H

ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE EDUCATORS – HOW TO BECOME MORE EFFECTIVE EDUCATORS IN THE UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL CURRICULUM

¹Chen Zhi Xiong, ¹Lai Siang Hui and ²Vishna Devi Nadarajah
¹Singapore and ²Malaysia

This workshop is conducted by faculty from the Asia-Pacific Biomedical Science Educators Association, established in 2018 with the aim of enhancing the capabilities of biomedical science educators across the Asia-Pacific region. Join us to learn from one another and build our collective competencies and confidence in fulfilling our roles in medical education.

The relevance of the biomedical sciences as the foundation and driver for clinical practice cannot be overstated. In most undergraduate medical curricula, the early years are focused on the biomedical sciences which is commonly taught in relatively controlled classroom settings. This contrasts sharply with the later years when teaching becomes more clinical and takes place within dynamic healthcare settings. Hence, the role of biomedical sciences faculty is vital in confronting challenges like this and preparing students for clinical training through effective content delivery, assessment of learning, and curriculum design.

With this in mind, biomedical science educators must recognise their own worth and value within the system. Advocacy for professional development — encompassing role expansion, competency growth, recognition, and career progression — is essential. We believe that biomedical sciences educators are also well-placed to contribute to the mentoring and coaching of learners, facilitating both their learning and understanding of the clinical relevance of the content, and driving clinical reasoning.

The workshop will be delivered through a combination of personal experience sharing, foundational concepts, and faculty perspectives, leading into facilitated group discussions amongst participants, and culminating in an open forum for broader sharing and dialogue.

This workshop will focus on three aspects of faculty development, enabling participants to (1) recognise their value and role, and cultivate an identity as biomedical science educators; (2) learn to deliver and design quality content, assessment and curriculum with clinical relevance to students effectively; and (3) embark on a path towards continuous improvement in biomedical sciences education.

The target participants are all those involved in teaching the biomedical sciences. Beyond faculty members, teaching assistants and administrators who contribute to classroom instruction or curriculum preparation are also encouraged to attend. Junior faculty stand to benefit from the insights shared by more experienced colleagues, gaining the relevant and important skillsets outlined above. More experienced faculty, in turn, will benefit from continued professional development and from enriching discussions that inspire the next generation of educators. Overall, we hope to foster a thriving community of practice spanning many generations of biomedical sciences educators.

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W2P5
Thursday 14th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room 554

SQUARE PEGS AND ROUND HOLES: ASSESSMENT DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION TO OPTIMISE REASONABLE ACCOMMODATIONS FOR INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY

Adareeka Jayasinghe, Andrew Linn and Rebecca Lock
Australia

To be awarded a fellowship with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), candidates must demonstrate competency in three high-stakes examinations.

To ensure equity throughout the assessment process, there is the opportunity to accommodate doctors who are likely to be disadvantaged in an assessment by a circumstance which is beyond their control. It is important to consider the impact of disability on exam performance and make adjustments to ensure a candidate’s circumstance does not have an adverse impact on their performance.

Both the Key Feature Problem exam (KFP) and Clinical Competency Exam (CCE) have evolved and been redesigned to cater for the diverse range of candidates who undertake the exams including those with English as a second language, learning disabilities, and neurodivergent traits. Design elements incorporated in these assessments included reduced focus on handwriting, spelling and grammar, and reasonable time adjustments to the clinical assessment to minimise the impact of candidate disability on performance.

The workshop will be facilitated by senior assessment medical educators from the RACGP, drawing on their expertise as practising clinicians and developers of the exams, to illustrate how learning disabilities and neurodiversity can be accommodated in assessment creation.

This highly interactive workshop combines small-group activities with whole-room discussions. By working through structured activities and scenarios, the facilitators will discuss the purpose of exam adjustments, how accommodations could be determined and what is reasonable in terms of clinical practice and “real-world” implications. A strength-based approach will be discussed and workshopped using the provided scenarios as well as case studies from participants to determine how best to accommodate disability in assessment.

1. Consider reasonable adjustments for learning disabilities and neurodiversity in exam design.
2. Apply a strength-based approach to managing candidates with a diagnosis and accommodating their disability in an assessment.

University academics, medical educators and health professionals involved in designing and implementing undergraduate and postgraduate assessment

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W2P6
Thursday 14th January 2027, 1.30pm - 3.00pm | Room 555

WHO HOLDS THE COMMITMENT? RETHINKING TRUST ACROSS THE PATIENT-SUPERVISOR-TRAINEE TRIAD WHEN AI ENTERS HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

Ahreum Lim, H Carrie Chen, Brian Gin, Lauren Maggio, Yoon Soo Park and Ara Tekian
United States of America

Trust is not merely a desirable feature of AI systems; in health professions education (HPE), it is the medium through which individuals become professionals. Across the patient–supervisor–trainee triad, trust carries moral weight that no specification can replicate: it is forward-looking, risk-bearing, and sustained through mutual vulnerability across relational and institutional time. Yet as AI enters clinical learning environments, “trust” and “entrustment” have been flattened into a technical metric– something to be calibrated, optimised, and marketed–while the accountability structures that trust is supposed to install quietly become obsolete. When a patient managing cancer began trusting AI over his physician, concealing this from his family until the consequences surfaced (Riley, New York Times, April 13, 2026), this was not individual misinformation but a trust displacement: a reorganisation of who we turn to, what questions we ask, and whose judgement we weigh, without anyone deciding to reorganise it. The tripartite trust structure (Gin et al., 2024) is being reshaped at each node, yet HPE lacks the conceptual tools to name what is being lost.

This workshop offers a shared space to think through what happens when AI enters trust dynamics in HPE, with an experiential component using VR-based virtual clinical encounter simulation.

Experience: Participants interact with AI-operated characters in simulated scenarios involving AI overreliance, navigating the trust dynamics that follow in real time.

Observation: Using facilitator-led prompts, participants document their immediate experience: where trust felt present or absent, where the relationship broke down, and what repair felt like.

Conceptualisation: Through collaborative stakeholder mapping, participants analyse observations across micro (clinical encounter), meso (supervisory relationship), and macro (institutional and systemic) levels of entrustment.

Experimentation: Drawing on experiential data and cultural perspectives from Asian Pacific HPE contexts, participants collectively reframe what trust requires when AI enters the triad.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) distinguish between trust based on track record and reliability and trust built through ongoing relations and commitments; (2) identify how AI tools shift trust dynamics across supervisors, trainees and patients; (3) use hands-on experience with virtual clinical encounter simulation to develop insights that go beyond what theory alone can offer; and (4) ask grounded questions about how cultural understandings of trust, including those common in Asian Pacific health education contexts, can remain visible when AI is adopted.

This workshop is designed for health professions educators, clinical supervisors, simulation specialists, curriculum designers, and medical education researchers, particularly those working in or across Asian Pacific contexts, who are navigating AI integration in clinical training environments. It will be especially relevant to those who have experienced uncertainty about whether enthusiasm or scepticism toward AI tools is the "correct" professional posture, and who want conceptual and experiential learning tools to move beyond that binary. No prior expertise in AI systems or philosophy of trust is required; willingness to engage with simulation and structured reflection is essential.

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W2P7

INVITING AMBIGUITY AND CELEBRATING IMPERFECTION: HOW VISUAL THINKING STRATEGIES SUPPORT REFLECTION AND COLLABORATION IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

¹Margaret Chisolm, ²Razan Baabdullah, ¹Kamna Balhara, ³Hirohisa Fujikawa, ⁴Liu Tzu-Hung (Leon) and ¹Mariah Robertson
¹United States of America, ²Saudi Arabia, ³Japan and ⁴Taiwan

Background: Learning beyond efficiency requires careful observation with openness to diverse perspectives, intentional pauses for reflection and metacognition, and comfort with ambiguity. Medical educators may need to look beyond traditional paradigms of medical education to identify innovative teaching approaches that create safe environments for learners to do so. Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a structured yet open-ended museum-based pedagogy that invites dialogue on works of art through close looking and collaborative meaning-making. By normalising “not knowing” and encouraging participants to resist premature closure, VTS cultivates empathy, communication, and reflective judgement — capacities central to the wisdom of imperfection in health professions education (HPE). Indeed, a growing body of evidence supports the use of VTS in HPE, and many educators seek practical coaching to facilitate VTS confidently and integrate it into UGME, GME, and CPD.

Structure of Workshop:

1. Welcome and framing: the wisdom of imperfection and why VTS matters in HPE (5 minutes);
2. Large group VTS demonstration followed by debrief of facilitation skills, including VTS principles, evidence in HPE, and connections to reflective practice, empathy, and uncertainty tolerance (25 minutes);
3. Small group facilitation practice sessions with coaching on psychological safety, equity of voice, holding ambiguity (30 minutes);
4. Debrief focused on normalising “not knowing”; language that invites exploration; reducing hierarchy (10 minutes);
5. Discussion of integration into curricula and assessment/evaluation: session design, image selection, accessibility, outcomes alignment, observation rubrics, mixed-methods approaches to evaluation (15 minutes);
6. Closing synthesis and sharing resources (5 minutes).

Participants will:

1. Articulate how Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), an art museum-based learning framework, operationalises “learning beyond efficiency” by inviting ambiguity and multiple perspectives in medical education;
2. Observe and/or facilitate VTS-based discussions using inclusive questioning, paraphrasing, and linking to promote psychological safety and reduce hierarchy;
3. Recognise and resist premature closure; model language that normalises uncertainty and imperfection;
4. Adapt VTS to varied contexts (classroom, museum, clinical humanities) and levels (UGME/GME/CPD);
5. Select feasible assessment strategies to demonstrate an impact on observation, communication, empathy, and tolerance for ambiguity.

Health professions educators, clinicians, and learners interested in inclusive, reflective methods that strengthen observation, communication, perspective taking, and tolerance for ambiguity, as well as those interested in integrating the arts into their curriculum. No prior arts experience is required. This is an introductory workshop open to all levels of participants.

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W2P8
Thursday 14th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room C-2

BEYOND PERFECTION: CULTIVATING REFLECTION AND PROFESSIONAL GROWTH IN MEDICINE THROUGH COACHING CONVERSATIONS

Aileen Adriano and Pedro Tanaka
United States of America

In health professions education, some of the most meaningful learning emerges not from perfect performance, but from thoughtful reflection on uncertainty, challenge, and growth. Increasingly, educators recognise that professional development unfolds not solely through efficiency or performance metrics, but through reflective dialogue that helps individuals interpret experience, gain insight, and identify pathways forward.

Coaching conversations offer a powerful approach to fostering this kind of reflective learning. By shifting from directive instruction toward curiosity-driven dialogue, coaching creates space for exploration, insight, and professional growth across the continuum of health professions education.

Grounded in scholarship on reflective practice, coaching in medical education, and professional identity formation, this interactive workshop introduces practical coaching strategies that enhance communication, leadership, and professional development. Facilitated by Stanford University faculty who are also certified executive coaches, the session integrates brief conceptual framing with experiential learning and guided practice. The facilitators bring extensive experience in faculty development, leadership education, and executive coaching with clinicians and academic leaders.

Participants will explore the structure of effective coaching conversations and practice core coaching competencies including coaching presence, generative questioning, and reflective listening. Using structured frameworks such as ORID and STAR, participants will engage in small-group exercises and live coaching conversations designed to support reflective dialogue with colleagues, trainees, and interprofessional teams.

In the space between perfection and possibility, coaching conversations create room for reflection, insight, and growth. Participants will leave with practical strategies to transform everyday conversations into opportunities for learning, professional development, and collaborative growth across clinical, educational, and leadership settings.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the key phases of an effective coaching conversation and how coaching differs from directive advising or teaching.
2. Demonstrate foundational coaching competencies, including coaching presence, reflective listening, and generative questioning.
3. Apply structured reflection frameworks (e.g., ORID and STAR) to facilitate coaching conversations with colleagues, trainees, and interprofessional teams.
4. Conduct brief coaching conversations that support goal clarification, reflective insight, and forward action in clinical and educational settings.

This workshop is designed for health professions educators, faculty members, clinical teachers, and institutional leaders who wish to strengthen their coaching, communication, and leadership skills. It will be particularly valuable for faculty involved in teaching and mentoring trainees, residency and fellowship programme leaders (e.g., programme directors and faculty advisors), faculty developers and medical education leaders, and clinicians interested in coaching approaches to professional development. Interprofessional educators working with healthcare teams may also benefit. Participants at any stage of their academic or clinical career who seek to foster reflective dialogue, support professional growth, and cultivate learning-oriented environments will gain practical strategies.

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W2P9
Thursday 14th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room G

REFLECTION, MEANING AND CONNECTION: THE ROLE OF MEDICAL HUMANITIES IN BUILDING RESILIENCE AMONG CLINICIANS

Briseida Mema and Anne Kawamura
Canada

Medicine’s demands often leave little space for reflection or emotional processing; yet, clinicians’ capacity to find meaning in their work is central to their resilience. Medical humanities, through art, narrative, and shared reflection, create deliberate spaces where clinicians can pause, make sense of complex experiences, and reconnect with purpose. This interactive workshop draws on a body of published work by our group, exploring the transformative role of the humanities in postgraduate medical education.

Participants will engage with selected prompts designed to evoke curiosity, vulnerability, and shared reflection. Through guided activities, participants will experience how responding to or creating art can serve as a mirror to one’s inner landscape, while group reflection through art transforms individual insight into shared understanding. When clinicians reflect together, they discover not only common emotional ground but also renewed purpose and solidarity in the face of demanding practice. These creative encounters serve as catalysts for group meaning-making, sometimes moving beyond individual reflection to explore how clinicians collectively interpret their professional and personal experiences, uncertainties, and emotional responses. Research from our humanities curriculum demonstrates that engaging in such shared reflection fosters authenticity, empathy, and a renewed sense of community among healthcare professionals.

Through guided facilitation and discussion, participants will examine how vulnerability, when safely supported through artistic engagement, can dissolve professional hierarchies and open space for genuine connection. In doing so, the humanities function not as a retreat from medicine but as a practice of returning to it with greater awareness and compassion.

This workshop provides a model for integrating structured reflective and artistic endeavours within residency programmes to nurture resilience, foster collegial trust, and strengthen the human foundations of clinical practice.

• Describe how reflection through the humanities supports meaning-making and resilience.
• Illustrate art-based endeavours that foster vulnerability and authentic connection.
• Develop strategies to integrate the humanities into postgraduate training.

This workshop is designed for clinicians, educators, and trainees across all stages of practice who seek to deepen reflection, foster resilience, and reconnect with meaning in their work. It will be particularly valuable for programme directors, faculty, and leaders interested in integrating humanities-based approaches into training, as well as individuals invested in wellness, professional identity formation, and team cohesion. Those working in high-intensity clinical environments, where emotional processing is often limited, may find this especially relevant. No prior experience with the arts is required, only a willingness to reflect, engage with others, and explore vulnerability within a supportive community.

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W2P10
Thursday 14th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room H

WHO ARE YOU? DEFINING YOUR IDENTITY AS A RESILIENT HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATOR

¹Kimberly Dahlman, ²Chen Zhi Xiong, ³Scott McCoombe and ¹Neil Osheroff
¹United States of America, ²Singapore and ³Australia

Over the past decade, there has been a shift away from the traditional health professions teacher, whose duties were often limited to the role of content-expert lecturer or course organiser, to a professional educator with a more complex skill set. This workshop will explore how changes in health professional curricula has altered the professional identity of faculty members, how it is likely to further influence professional identity in the future, and how modern medical educators can foster resilience in the face of these changes. Participants will identify and discuss the skills that should be expected of a “modern” health professions educator and the standards for educator excellence. This information will be leveraged to help participants identify their educator strengths and opportunities for improvement and future growth, and to create an environment that supports career and personal resilience.

This interactive workshop, organised by members of the International Association of Medical Science Educators, the Asia Pacific Biomedical Science Educators Association, and the Australian & New Zealand Association for Health Professions Educators will provide a framework that participants can use to assess their current roles, potential future roles, and resilience. Following this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe their professional identity, how they arrived at that identity, and how it has changed.
2. Define the different roles of health professions educators.
3. Self-identify educator strengths and opportunities for improvement.
4. Identify strategies to build resilience in their careers.

This workshop is targeted to medical science and clinician educators who are involved in teaching medical and other health professions trainees. Educators at all career stages will benefit from attending.

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W2P11
Thursday 14th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room 554

FUTURE-READY HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION: LLMS, AI AVATARS, AGENTIC WORKFLOWS, MIXED REALITY AND IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Seow Choon Sheong, Gene Chan, Gao YuJia and Alexander Ng
Singapore

Two converging technological shifts are transforming health professions education. First, large language models (LLMs), conversational AI avatars, and agentic workflow architectures are enabling AI systems that simulate patients, guide clinical reasoning through adaptive dialogue, generate personalised learning experiences, and orchestrate multi-step educational processes. Unlike conventional automation, agentic AI can plan tasks, coordinate sub-agents, adapt to learner performance, and deliver longitudinal competency tracking at scale.

Second, mixed reality (MR) technologies — spanning augmented reality, virtual reality, and spatial computing — have moved beyond experimental novelty into evidence-supported educational modalities. Recent meta-analyses demonstrate moderate-to-large improvements in procedural skills training (SMD 1.08–1.75) and meaningful gains in anatomy knowledge (SMD 0.40–0.58). Microsoft’s discontinuation of HoloLens 2 in late 2024 has triggered a hardware transition, while Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3, and Magic Leap 2 are redefining what is feasible across anatomy laboratories, surgical suites, nursing simulation centres, and rehabilitation settings.

When AI and MR converge, the result is a continuous learning ecosystem: LLM-powered virtual patients embedded in immersive environments, automated surgical performance assessment within VR simulators, adaptive scenario generation, and AR tele mentoring that bridges geographical divides for clinical training. These advances are relevant across all health professions — in nursing (VR ward simulation, medication safety), physiotherapy and rehabilitation (motor learning, gait retraining, virtual therapeutic environments), occupational therapy, and speech therapy.

Despite this progress, most health professions educators lack structured frameworks for evaluating and integrating these technologies. This workshop addresses that gap, providing hands-on exposure to both AI and MR capabilities with practical tools for curriculum-aligned implementation, drawing on institutional experience at NUH, NUHS, and NUS.

1. Describe the current capabilities and evidence base for LLMs, AI avatars, agentic workflows, and MR/XR in health professions education.
2. Understand how agentic AI supports longitudinal learning journeys, competency tracking, and personalised feedback at scale.
3. Distinguish between AR, VR, MR, and spatial computing, identifying where each adds distinct educational value across professions.
4. Identify practical AI and MR use cases across undergraduate and postgraduate curricula in medicine, nursing, and allied health.
5. Explore how LLM avatars support OSCE training, communication skills, and formative assessment, and how AR telementoring enables remote clinical training.
6. Understand how AI enhances MR learning environments through automated assessment, adaptive scenarios, and generative virtual patients.

• Medical educators across all clinical specialties (undergraduate and postgraduate)
• Nursing educators, clinical nurse specialists, and nurse preceptors
• Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and rehabilitation science educators
• OSCE leads, assessment faculty, and simulation educators
• Programme directors and curriculum leaders across health professions
• Centres for health professions education and digital education leads

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W2P12
Thursday 14th January 2027, 3.30pm - 5.00pm | Room 555

USING DATA TO TELL THE STORY OF STUDENT PROGRESS AND LEARNING JOURNEY

Olivia Ng, Phua Dong Haur and Hannah Lim Joo Min
Singapore

In the era of competency-based medical education, we are "data rich but insight poor." While we meticulously collect Workplace-Based Assessments (WBAs), exam scores, and multi-source feedback, these data points often remain siloed in fragmented spreadsheets. Consequently, the "story" of a student’s professional development is often lost in the noise of individual assessments.

This hands-on workshop transforms participants from data collectors into data storytellers. We move beyond static averages to explore the longitudinal narrative of a medical student’s journey. Participants will learn the pedagogical and technical principles of synthesising diverse assessment data into a cohesive visual timeline.

The session is divided into three key phases:

1. Data Architecture - Transitioning from "messy" administrative lists to structured, longitudinal datasets.
2. Visual Storytelling - Identifying which visual markers best represent growth/stagnation.
3. Dashboard Construction - Utilising widely available data-processing and business intelligence tools to build interactive learning journey.

By the end of the session, attendees will have a prototype for a dashboard that tracks a student’s progress from novice to competent practitioner. We will explicitly consider how these visuals can mediate feedback conversations and support programmatic assessment.

Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop. Sample datasets will be provided. Participants may also optionally prepare their own datasets in advance. The workshop will use Microsoft Excel and Power BI.

Participants may wish to prepare in advance by downloading Power BI here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Synthesise fragmented assessment data (including WBAs and academic scores) into a unified longitudinal dataset.
2. Select appropriate visualisation types to represent professional growth and competency milestones.
3. Construct an interactive dashboard that allows tracking of student trajectories and early identification of those needing support.
4. Evaluate the role of data visualisation in enhancing feedback and supporting the shift toward programmatic assessment in medical education.

This workshop is designed for medical/clinical educators/developers, curriculum leads, and teaching support staff who wish to have a more holistic, visual view of student progress. While we will use common data-processing and business intelligence software no advanced coding or IT expertise is required, only a basic familiarity with spreadsheets and a desire to make student data more actionable.

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