{"id":72442,"date":"2024-03-25T11:17:44","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T03:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicine.nus.edu.sg\/taps\/?post_type=issues&p=72442"},"modified":"2024-07-02T10:11:35","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T02:11:35","slug":"scholarship-in-health-professions-education-development-from-the-past-to-future-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/medicine.nus.edu.sg\/taps\/issues\/scholarship-in-health-professions-education-development-from-the-past-to-future-possibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Scholarship in Health Professions Education-Development from the Past to Future Possibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitted: 4 November 2023
\r\nAccepted: 20 November 2023
\r\nPublished online: 2 April, TAPS 2024, 9(2),98-100
\r\nhttps:\/\/doi.org\/10.29060\/TAPS.2024-9-2\/PV3165<\/a><\/p>\r\n

John Norcini<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, United States of America<\/span><\/i><\/p>\r\n

<\/span>I. INTRODUCTION<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Over the past 25 years, the Asia Pacific region has seen striking growth in the scholarship of health professions education, and it is poised to continue its development. A window into the past and a glimpse of the future can be found in the meetings of the Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference (APMEC), which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. To frame my personal observations, a word cloud was created using the titles of the plenaries, keynotes, and symposia of the 2003, 2004, and 2006 conferences and another was created using the titles from 2021, 2022, and 2023. When comparing these two clouds (an exercise akin to interpreting inkblots), three themes emerged: interprofessional education and practice (IPEP), the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), and the growing role of technology.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Interprofessional Education and Practice. In the first three conferences, the most common word was \u2018medical\u2019 and in the last three it was \u2018education\u2019. This parallels developments in the field, which started with a focus entirely on medical education, expanded to all the health professions, and in its most recent iteration, turned to interprofessional education. The reason for this latest development is research showing that interprofessional practice results in better patient outcomes, improved efficiency of care, and increased satisfaction among providers (Reeves et al., 2017).<\/span><\/p>\r\n

One of the biggest barriers to IPEP is social closure, defined by Mackert (2012) as the \u201cprocess of drawing boundaries, constructing identities, and building communities in order to monopolize scarce resources for one\u2019s own group, thereby excluding others from using them.\u201d (Mackert, 2012). Each profession has an educational model that encompasses as much of practice as possible, and they compete over ownership at the boundaries. This limits interprofessional cooperation and the opportunity for joint training.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Social closure has been institutionalised through the regulatory processes (i.e., accreditation and licensure\/registration) used in many countries. These fix the boundaries of the professions and the nature of training and practice. Regulation ensures initial competence but makes it challenging to develop shared competencies across the professions. Moreover, there are few regulatory requirements for keeping up with changing practice and even fewer ways to acknowledge the acquisition of additional competencies after formal training.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Digital badges or micro-credentials are one way to approach the issue of social closure.\u00a0 They are circumscribed credentials based on shorter educational experiences followed by assessment. They can be part of existing broad educational and regulatory processes, complement them, or replace them in part. These credentials can be applied across professions and throughout careers.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Micro-credentials can support the development of IPEP by increasing access and shifting the focus from what the professions can do, to what patients and healthcare systems need. The fact that different professions experience the same educational process leads to comparability across providers regardless of discipline, less siloed regulation, and increased interprofessional collaboration. Furthermore, it offers a pathway for practitioners who seek to upgrade their skills or acquire new competencies.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The scholarship of teaching and learning. The second theme that emerged from a comparison of the word clouds was the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). \u2018Curriculum\u2019 and \u2018assessment\u2019 were prominent in the first APMEC conferences, but they vanished recently, with \u2018learning\u2019, \u2018scholarship\u2019, and \u2018educator\u2019 being more prominent. In my view, this shift signifies the growing role of SoTL.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The goal of SOTL is to improve student learning by identifying effective teaching practices and disseminating those practices. It is a relatively new field of scholarship that has nine attributes: \u201ccommitted engagement in action, critique-based, disciplinary, context-oriented, critical enquiry process, continuous deep reflection, dynamic process, shared publicly, and learning focused.\u201d (Mirhosseini et al., 2018).<\/span><\/p>\r\n

A recent edition of the Asia Pacific Scholar exemplifies this work (Lee & Norcini, 2023). It included studies that addressed topics such as community based interprofessional education, cultural awareness training in the emergency room, approaches to vaccine hesitancy, innovative oral exams for occupational therapy students, and coaching programs for faculty members.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Technology. The third theme that emerged from the comparison of the word clouds was technology.\u00a0 \u2018eLearning\u2019, prevalent in the early days of the conference, has disappeared to be replaced by \u2018technology\u2019. In my view, this signifies its growing role in health professions education and assessment. To pursue this further, Bard (Google’s AI chatbot) was asked, \u201cWhat effect will technology have on education in the health professions?\u201d Below is Bard\u2019s response, edited for British spelling and for length by removing examples.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cTechnology is already having a significant impact on education in the health professions, and this trend is only going to accelerate in the coming years. Here are some of the key ways in which technology is transforming health professions education<\/span><\/p>\r\n