Reflection on medical education

My selective in Ambulatory Medicine at TWH is off to a great start. I signed up for this rotation because its aim is to combine the topic of medical education with clinic experiences. Medical education is a field coming of age but unfortunately its themes have not been emphasized in our curriculum. As such, I hope to broaden my understanding of medical education topics in the coming weeks.

A good place to start was reading the articles assigned to us, which range from topics about the shortcomings of the traditional clerkship curriculum (lack of continuity among different learning experiences being the main issue), an overview of medical education in the past 50 years from the perspective of a veteran in the field, Dr. Ronald Harden (who helped pioneer the OSCE and Harvey simulation teaching!), the qualities that make a tutor effective (subject matter knowledge and personal attributes like empathy, authenticity, and communication skills), and several theories of medical education research. I admit that it was difficult to understand and follow the line of argument in the latter paper, titled “Chaos, complexity and complicatedness” by Geoff Norman, though a rebuttal commentary, titled “Highway spotters and traffic controllers” by Glenn Regehr assured me I wasn’t the only one.

In any case, my readings so far have increased my understanding of the breadth of medical education research and that much remains to be done. As Dr. David Hirsch commented in his paper titled, “’Continuity’ as an organizing principle for clinical education reform”, the ultimate purpose of medical education is to meet the health needs of society. Getting there is another matter, but since the field of medical education is an emerging one, there is promise for the future.

-Laura