How culture affects validity: understanding Japanese residents' sense-making of evaluating clinical teachers.

Objectives: Traditionally, evaluation is considered a measurement process that can be performed independently of the cultural context. However, more recently the importance of considering raters' sense-making, that is, the process by which raters assign meaning to their collective experiences, is being recognised. Thus far, the majority of the discussion on this topic has originated from Western perspectives.

Designing a system for performance appraisal: balancing physicians' accountability and professional development.

Background: In many healthcare systems, physicians are accustomed to periodically participate in individual performance appraisals to guide their professional development. For the purpose of revalidation, or maintenance of certification, they need to demonstrate that they have engaged with the outcomes of these appraisals. The combination of taking ownership in professional development and meeting accountability requirements may cause undesirable interference of purposes.

Attracting and retaining physicians in less attractive specialties: the role of continuing medical education.

Background: Less attractive specialties in medicine are struggling to recruit and retain physicians. When properly organized and delivered, continuing medical education (CME) activities that include short courses, coaching in the workplace, and communities of practice might offer a solution to this problem. This position paper discusses how educationalists can create CME activities based on the self-determination theory that increase physicians' intrinsic motivation to work in these specialties.

Sharing Reflections on Multisource Feedback in a Peer Group Setting: Stimulating Physicians' Professional Performance and Development.

Purpose: Reflecting on and using feedback are important for physicians' continuous professional development (CPD). A common format is the discussion of multisource feedback (MSF) in a one-on-one session with a trusted peer or coach. A new approach is to discuss MSF during a peer group session moderated by a professional facilitator.

Stimulating Students' Interprofessional Teamwork Skills Through Community-Based Education: A Mixed Methods Evaluation.

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is suggested as a good means to prepare future healthcare professionals for collaborative work in interprofessional teams enabling them to solve complex health problems. Previous studies have advocated experiential IPE, including community-based IPE (CBIPE). This study aims to evaluate a CBIPE programme by exploring the students' perception toward CBIPE design and toward groups' teamwork.

Nationwide survey of patients' and doctors' perceptions of what is needed in doctor - patient communication in a Southeast Asian context.

Background: Asian countries are making efforts to apply the partnership model in doctor-patient communication that has been used effectively in Western countries. However, notable differences between Western and Asian cultures, especially the acceptance of a hierarchical order and little attention to individuality in Asian cultures, could mean that the application of the partnership model in Vietnam requires adaptation. The study aimed to investigate whether communication models used in the Western world are appropriate in Southeast Asia, and to identify key items in doctor-patient communication that should be included in a doctor-patient communication model for training in Vietnam.

Why do graduates choose to work in a less attractive specialty? A cross-sectional study on the role of personal values and expectations.

Background: Primary health care (PHC), of which preventive medicine (PM) is a subspecialty, will have to cope with a deficiency of staff in the future, which makes the retention of graduates urgent. This study was conducted in Vietnam, where PM is an undergraduate degree in parallel to medical training. It aims to identify facilitating and hindering factors that impact recruitment and retention of PM graduates in the specialty.

How To Get Your Clinical Teaching Team Ready For Curriculum Change: A Practical Guide.

Our health care system is constantly adapting to change at an increasingly rapid pace. Unavoidably, this also applies to the field of medical education. As a result, clinical teaching teams face the challenging task of successfully implementing the proposed changes in daily practice.

Embodying empathy: A phenomenological study of physician touch.

Context: Empathic physician behaviour is associated with improved patient outcomes. One way to demonstrate empathy is through the use of non-verbal communication (NVC) including touch. To date, research on NVC, and specifically touch, has been relatively limited in medicine, which is surprising given the central role it plays in conveying affective and empathic messages.

Future doctors' perspectives on health professionals' responsibility regarding nutrition care and why doctors should learn about nutrition: A qualitative study.

Background: Improved dietary and nutrition behavior may help reduce the occurrence of noncommunicable diseases which have become global public health emergencies in recent times. However, doctors do not readily provide nutrition counseling to their patients. We explored medical students' perspectives on health professionals' nutrition care responsibility, and why doctors should learn about nutrition and provide nutrition care in the general practice setting.

How clinical teaching teams deal with educational change: 'we just do it'.

Background: In postgraduate medical education, program directors are in the lead of educational change within clinical teaching teams. As change is part of a social process, it is important to not only focus on the program director but take their other team members into account. The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth insight into how clinical teaching teams manage and organize curriculum change processes, and implement curriculum change in daily practice.

Does PBL deliver constructive collaboration for students in interprofessional tutorial groups?

Background: Training health professional students in teamwork is recognized as an important step to create interprofessional collaboration in the clinical workplace. Interprofessional problem-based learning (PBL) is one learning approach that has been proposed to provide students with the opportunity to develop the necessary skills to work collaboratively with various health professionals. This study aimed to explore the extent to which students in interprofessional tutorial groups demonstrate constructive collaboration during group discussions.

Trainees' preferences regarding choice of place of work after completing medical training in traditional or problem-based learning/community-based education and service curricula: a study in Ghanaian medical schools.

Introduction: Career choices, recruitment and subsequent retention of healthcare professionals in the rural areas are a major worldwide concern and challenge to the health sector, leading to human resource shortages, resulting in poor quality health care for rural communities. Medical education has integrated community-oriented medical education strategies in undergraduate medical training to help address the challenges of health care in rural communities. These strategies are likely to impact the strategies of delivering the content of undergraduate medical curricula.

From critic to inspirer: four profiles reveal the belief system and commitment to educational mission of medical academics.

Background: The educational beliefs of medical academics influence how they act in class and thus influence student learning. One component of these are beliefs academics hold about the qualities of teachers themselves. These teacher qualities range from behaviours and competencies to more personal attributes such as the teacher's identity and mission.

A New Multisource Feedback Tool for Evaluating the Performance of Specialty-Specific Physician Groups: Validity of the Group Monitor Instrument.

Introduction: Since clinical practice is a group-oriented process, it is crucial to evaluate performance on the group level. The Group Monitor (GM) is a multisource feedback tool that evaluates the performance of specialty-specific physician groups in hospital settings, as perceived by four different rater classes. In this study, we explored the validity of this tool.

Body pedagogics: embodied learning for the health professions.

Medicine As Embodied Practice: Bodily dysfunctions bring patients to their doctors and even diseases of the mind can originate in patients' bodies. Doctors respond by using their own bodies - hands, eyes, ears and sometimes noses - to make diagnoses and treat diseases. Yet, despite the embodied nature of practice, medicine typically treats the body as an object, paying scant attention to the subjective embodied experiences of patients and doctors.

Working in preventive medicine or not? Flawed perceptions decrease chance of retaining students for the profession.

Background: Recruiting and retaining students in preventive medical (PM) specialties has never been easy; one main challenge is how to select appropriate students with proper motivation. Understanding how students perceive PM practice differently from practicing doctors is necessary to guide students, especially for those for whom PM is only a substitute for medicine as their first study preference, properly during their study and, later, the practice of PM.

Methods: One thousand three hundred eighty-six PM students in four Vietnamese medical schools and 101 PM doctors filled out a questionnaire about the relevance of 44 characteristics of working in PM.

Faculty's work engagement in patient care: impact on job crafting of the teacher tasks.

Background: High levels of work engagement protect against burnout. This can be supported through the work environment and by faculty themselves when they try to improve their work environment. As a result, they can become more engaged and better performers.

Understanding attitude of health care professional teachers toward interprofessional health care collaboration and education in a Southeast Asian country.

Background: Faculty members play crucial roles as facilitators of learning for effective inter-professional education (IPE). However, faculty attitudes are reported to be barriers to successful implementation of IPE initiatives within health care education settings. This study aimed to investigate the following: 1) health care faculty members' attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and IPE; 2) factors affecting faculty members' perception toward IPC and IPE; and 3) health care professionals' perceptions toward factors that hamper the quality of IPC, and whether IPE is a possible remedy for the situation.

A mixed-method evaluation of the views of medical teachers on the applicability of the 'infant and young child feeding chapter' in Saudi medical colleges.

Background: Lack of sufficient preparation of physicians for the provision of breastfeeding support and counselling has been well-documented. The development of training in breastfeeding medicine for medical students is currently ongoing worldwide. This study was conducted to gain insights into a potential framework for a breastfeeding education curriculum.

Working among the rural communities in Ghana - why doctors choose to engage in rural practice.

Background: An unequal distribution of health personnel, leading to unfavourable differences in health status between urban and rural populations, is a serious cause for concern globally. Part of the solution to this problem lies in attracting medical doctors to rural, remote communities, which presents a real challenge. The present study therefore explored the factors that influence medical doctors' decision to practise in rural Ghana.

Crossborder curriculum partnerships: medical students' experiences on critical aspects.

Background: The past decade has witnessed an upsurge in medical curriculum partnerships established across national boundaries to offer students at the foreign institution (host) a learning experience comparable to that of students at the exporting institution (home). However, since the learning environments and national healthcare contexts differ greatly between institutions, concerns have been raised in the literature about potential low quality of curriculum delivery, inadequate preparation of students to practice in the host country healthcare setting, and a culture shock for host students having to study a home curriculum..

The Relationship Between the Learning and Patient Safety Climates of Clinical Departments and Residents' Patient Safety Behaviors.

Purpose: Improving residents' patient safety behavior should be a priority in graduate medical education to ensure the safety of current and future patients. Supportive learning and patient safety climates may foster this behavior. This study examined the extent to which residents' self-reported patient safety behavior can be explained by the learning climate and patient safety climate of their clinical departments.

Reflection revisited: how physicians conceptualize and experience reflection in professional practice - a qualitative study.

Background: For the purpose of continuous performance improvement, physicians are expected to reflect on their practice. While many reflection studies are theoretically oriented and often prescriptive in the sense that they conceptualize what reflection should look like, the current study starts with practicing physicians themselves and maps how these physicians conceptualize and experience reflection in daily professional practice.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with 13 hospital-based physicians from various specialties and institutions.