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:
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.
Great reminder!
The Harvard Macy Institute Podcast aims to connect our Harvard Macy Institute community and to develop our interest in health professions education topics and literature. Our podcast is hosted by our Program for Educators in the Health Professions course faculty Victoria Brazil, and features interviews with health professions educators about their scholarly work.
S2 E8 podcast is a conversation between Vic Brazil, Sebastian (Bas) Uijtdehaage, and Lauren Germain about why student evaluations of teaching (SETs) can appear ‘mindless,’ and about the inadequacies of many student evaluation systems in educational institutions.
