School of Medicine and Health Sciences Poster Presentations
Medical Education Research without Active Student Participation: An Observational Study
Document Type
Poster
Keywords
medical education research; active student participation
Publication Date
Spring 2017
Abstract
Given that a major concern of medical education research is to identify and provide effective pedagogical methods for knowledge transfer to and acquisition by students, the purpose of this study was to determine the extent of ACTIVE medical student involvement in medical education research.
We selected four recognized academic medical education journals, Medical Education, Medical Science Educator, International Journal of Medical Education, and Medical Education Online, and abstracted data on both author demographic and geographic location of studies conducted from January 1996-December 2016. Only articles that pertained to medical school education were analyzed and information regarding first author gender, senior author gender, student author, and geographic location of study were noted.
A total of 2,416 articles pertaining to medical school education were examined. We found that irrespective of the journal, less than 10% of the published articles had student authorship. Of the articles that did have student authors, less than 5% consisted of female student authors, demonstrating a potential gender disparity in medical education research. Additionally, there is also a geographic disparity in student authorship with 62% of all student authors coming from North America, compared to less than 38% in all other regions.
Clearly, medical students are not active participants in medical education research. Therefore, medical education research needs a paradigm shift that not only highlights issues that concern educators but also include student perspectives in terms of issues and questions to be investigated and answered, respectively, thereby giving students a prominent role in medical education research and allowing both faculty and students to synergistically improve the quality of medical education research.
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Open Access
1
Medical Education Research without Active Student Participation: An Observational Study
Given that a major concern of medical education research is to identify and provide effective pedagogical methods for knowledge transfer to and acquisition by students, the purpose of this study was to determine the extent of ACTIVE medical student involvement in medical education research.
We selected four recognized academic medical education journals, Medical Education, Medical Science Educator, International Journal of Medical Education, and Medical Education Online, and abstracted data on both author demographic and geographic location of studies conducted from January 1996-December 2016. Only articles that pertained to medical school education were analyzed and information regarding first author gender, senior author gender, student author, and geographic location of study were noted.
A total of 2,416 articles pertaining to medical school education were examined. We found that irrespective of the journal, less than 10% of the published articles had student authorship. Of the articles that did have student authors, less than 5% consisted of female student authors, demonstrating a potential gender disparity in medical education research. Additionally, there is also a geographic disparity in student authorship with 62% of all student authors coming from North America, compared to less than 38% in all other regions.
Clearly, medical students are not active participants in medical education research. Therefore, medical education research needs a paradigm shift that not only highlights issues that concern educators but also include student perspectives in terms of issues and questions to be investigated and answered, respectively, thereby giving students a prominent role in medical education research and allowing both faculty and students to synergistically improve the quality of medical education research.
Comments
Poster to be presented at GW Annual Research Days 2017.