In his book Five Perspectives on Teaching, Dan Pratt describes perspectives as ‘something we look through, rather than at as we go about the business of teaching. He eschews the idea of simplistic ‘best practices,’ and invites a ‘plurality of the good’ in teaching - recognizing our perspectives and thoughtful about how they shape our teaching formats.

 Do these perspectives change over time? Are the influences on them internal or external? What is the effect of a massive disruption such as the COVID-19 pandemic?

Dan gave us a precis of the five perspectives and the Teaching Perspectives Inventory - a freely available instrument for educators to help identify their dominant and back up perspectives. In reviewing data from Harvard Macy Institute Scholars, Amanda offered some insights into trends observed over time, and some dramatic shifts during the pandemic. After some initial shifts towards a transmission perspective, developmental and nurturing perspectives are on the rise again. Food for thought! We reflected on the role of technology and culture in shaping teachers’ perspectives and practice.

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Two decades ago, medical errors were brought into the spotlight with the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err is Human. This report highlighted the alarming rate of medical errors and can be credited to the numerous efforts undertaken to improve the safety of health care delivery. After a medical error occurs, patients expect disclosure of the event. What exactly does the process of disclosure entail? Galagher provides a simple assessment of disclosure that includes three elements:

Healthcare and health professions education is increasingly global and interconnected. This has many benefits, but risks ignoring important cultural and contextual differences in the settings where education is delivered. In this episode Sawsan Abdel-Razig tells us about ‘glocalisation’ - combining the terms globalisation and localization to describe the adaptation of international standards to local needs and cultures. We explored this concept through her work in the United Arab Emirates, where she works as chair of medical education at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

There are some reasons why I think that we are in the golden age of addressing gaps in medical education through technology:

• High-quality modules and curricula are widely available online:

One of the most important roles of a medical educator in this age of technology is that of a content curator, rather than a content creator. This is because so many high-quality modules are being created and shared online by national experts that educators aim should be to curate an educational experience for their students rather than create them from scratch.

How many times have you heard the following: “You should write that up!”? While mentioned by colleagues and mentors with positive intent, suggestions such as these are usually mentioned after implementation of an educational initiative. Educators who take the time to develop novel or unique experiences for trainees or colleagues would be wise to consider how it could be shared with others as scholarship during the development stage, before it is implemented.