Promotion Criteria for Medical Educators: Are We Climbing a Ladder with Invisible Rungs?

Objective: In 2006 the Association of American Medical Colleges recommended standardization of documentation of the contributions of medical educators and guidelines for their academic promotion. The authors characterized current United States (US) medical school promotion guidelines for medical educators.

Methods: Authors collected publicly available data from medical school promotion websites from March through July 2022 after determining categories by traditional-set domains as well as peer-reviewed standards.

Can We Ensure That Workshops Are Effective in Their Goal? Impact of a National Education Workshop on Participants' Subsequent Scholarship.

Medical education conferences offer practical workshops to facilitate physicians' lifelong learning. Little is known about integration of workshop material after conferences. We sought to evaluate the application of workshop content focused on scholarly publication preparation.

Collecting Validity Evidence: A Hands-on Workshop for Medical Education Assessment Instruments.

Introduction: There is an increasing call for developing validity evidence in medical education assessment. The literature lacks a practical resource regarding an actual development process. Our workshop teaches how to apply principles of validity evidence to existing assessment instruments and how to develop new instruments that will yield valid data.

Patient Perspectives on Language Discordance During Healthcare Visits: Findings From the Extremely High-Density Multicultural State of Qatar.

Reducing language and cultural barriers in healthcare are significant factors in resolving health disparities. Qatar's rapidly growing multicultural population presents new challenges to the healthcare system. The purpose of this research was to explore patients' perspectives about language discordance, and the strategies used to overcome language barriers during patients' visits.

Traditional Arabic & Islamic medicine: validation and empirical assessment of a conceptual model in Qatar.

Background: Evidence indicates traditional medicine is no longer only used for the healthcare of the poor, its prevalence is also increasing in countries where allopathic medicine is predominant in the healthcare system. While these healing practices have been utilized for thousands of years in the Arabian Gulf, only recently has a theoretical model been developed illustrating the linkages and components of such practices articulated as Traditional Arabic & Islamic Medicine (TAIM). Despite previous theoretical work presenting development of the TAIM model, empirical support has been lacking.

Patient responses to research recruitment and follow-up surveys: findings from a diverse multicultural health care setting in Qatar.

Background: Health care researchers working in the Arabian Gulf need information on how to optimize recruitment and retention of study participants in extremely culturally diverse settings. Implemented in Doha, Qatar in 2012 with 4 language groups, namely Arabic, English, Hindi, and Urdu, this research documents persons' responses to recruitment, consent, follow-up, and reminder procedures during psychometric testing of the Multicultural Assessment Instrument (MAI), a novel self- or interviewer-administered survey.

Methods: Bilingual research assistants recruited adults in outpatient clinics by approaching persons in particular who appeared to be from a target language group.

Procedures of recruiting, obtaining informed consent, and compensating research participants in Qatar: findings from a qualitative investigation.

Background: Very few researchers have reported on procedures of recruiting, obtaining informed consent, and compensating participants in health research in the Arabian Gulf Region. Empirical research can inform the debate about whether to adjust these procedures for culturally diverse settings. Our objective was to delineate procedures related to recruiting, obtaining informed consent, and compensating health research participants in the extremely high-density multicultural setting of Qatar.

Challenges and opportunities of US and Arab collaborations in health services research: a case study from Qatar.

Economic globalization and advances in technology have made it more feasible and even necessary to develop international research collaborations in global public health. Historically, collaborations in global research described in the literature have been mostly "North-South" collaborations in which the more developed "North" country works together with a developing "South" country to conduct research in the latter. This type of collaboration has for the most part, represented unequal partnership and rarely left behind a lasting impact.