Getting the best people on the best career path for them requires robust ongoing selection and continued assessment methodologies.
Clinical Education
Clinical Education is a multidisciplinary research group. It is one of the largest and most active medical educational research groups in the country, with four Professors and eight funded PhD studentships. Our aims are to carry out first class research and scholarship that feeds directly into the improvement of teaching, learning and assessment. The past record of grants and publications has led to ICE being awarded 5 National Institute of Health Research Academic Clinical Fellowships and 2 Academic Clinical Lectureships, and 3 HEA National Teaching Fellowships.
Our current strategy is to consolidate past work by forming research groups around three of our areas of expertise: 1) assessment, 2) science teaching, and 3) professionalism. We have strong collaborations with academic organisations and professional bodies in the UK and internationally. Our focus on methodological rigour will keep us in the forefront of clinical education research.
Clinical education research refers to research and development aimed at evaluating educational strategies and studies aimed at understanding how medical and other healthcare professionals learn to be effective practitioners and improve patient care, both for the individual and society at large. It includes topics such as the development of curricula, quality of teaching, and deeper understanding of how clinicians learn and continue to learn. Clinical education draws heavily on theories and methods from health services research and the social sciences.
Research Focus
The group’s research focuses on three research areas in clinical education, having further developed the research strategy 2008-13:
Research Area
1. Assessment – Dr Julian Archer
The Collaboration for Assessment Research, Innovation And Development (CARIAD) brings together researchers who are interested in understanding how to select and assess students, doctors and dentists across the clinical education continuum. Choosing the right students, demonstrating progress while assuring the medical and dental curricula are core College activities that are the bedrock of future patient safety and drivers for quality of care: the best people, best trained. Getting the best people on the best career path for them requires robust ongoing selection and continued assessment methodologies. CARIAD works throughout the continuum at Peninsula, nationally with Royal Colleges and internationally with particular expertise in predictive selection, progress testing and workplace based assessment (including revalidation) using modern psychometrics and qualitative methodologies. If you would like to know more about our work or wish to discuss a possible collaboration please contact Dr Julian Archer julian.archer@pms.ac.uk
2. Professionalism – Dr Oonagh Corrigan
The Researching Professionalism hub provides a forum for researchers to examine and develop theoretical, policy and practice related aspects of professionalism. The issue of professionalism is an extremely important one for medical education and practice. The relationship between doctors and society, and the environments in which doctors undertake their work have dramatically altered in recent years. The ethical values underpinning professionalism, such as mastery, autonomy, privilege and self-regulation, are being replaced with increased emphasis on the patient, doctor –patient interaction and on securing public trust. The hub generates ideas and activities via meetings, workshops and a reading group to support the Hub’s 23 members. Current projects and areas of work include; consent and shared decision making, trust in the doctor-patient relationship, the emotional work and self-care of doctors’, the everyday working life and professionalism of GPs, communication and team work in the clinic and policies and the politics of doctors’ revalidation. The hub endeavours to link with and include researchers across PCMD. One of our international speakers’ seminar days, given by Professor Ray DeVries from the University of Michigan, was co-hosted by the Institute of Health Service Research at the University of Exeter. If you are interested in joining our professionalism reading group or attending our seminars please email oonagh.corrigan@pms.ac.uk.
3. Science – Dr Karen Mattick
The ICE Science hub is a multidisciplinary research group which aims to understand the use of science by doctors and, thereby, how best to teach it. The hub's first group project was a systematic literature review to determine what is already known about how science is used within clinical practice. The limited literature available demonstrated that science comprises much more than just a knowledge base for clinicians, which has important implications for medical curriculum design. The hub supports individual projects and collaborative innovations. It has also hosted a number of well attended meetings with external speakers, including Professor Sir David Weatherall from the Weatherall Institute in Oxford, and plans to stage a debate on "Medicine: a science or an art?" early next year. Existing funded projects focus on junior doctor prescribing, how students link scientific matters to patient-centred practice, and the use of information resources by clinicians. Current bids focus on science and the medical humanities, student beliefs about science and evidence, and the scientific basis to popular myths. Karen.mattick@pms.ac.uk
