For the past seven years, we -- a museum educator and an academic radiologist -- have co-taught Seeing in Art and Medical Imaging, a first-of-its-kind medical humanities curriculum for residents in nuclear medicine and radiology based at the Harvard Art Museums. The program aims to foster residents' close looking and clinical skills,…

The terms 'feedback' and 'formative assessment' are ubiquitous in education, but their conceptual boundaries are ill-defined. This perspective piece explores the meaning of 'feedback' and 'formative assessment', revealing the entanglement and confusion that exists between these two terms. An argument for clarity of terms is made, to avoid…

In this perspective, the authors critically examine "rater training" as it has been conceptualized and used in medical education. By "rater training," they mean the educational events intended to "improve" rater performance and contributions during assessment events. Historically, rater training programs have focused…

A profound grasp of anatomy is indispensable for shaping competent and safe medical practitioners. This knowledge acquisition is pivotal in the early stages of medical education and remains crucial throughout clinical training. However, the evolving landscape of medical education has ushered in changes to the anatomy curriculum, marked by a…

Professional identity formation has emerged as a key topic for medical education research, with contributions from perspectives of psychological development and socialization opening up needed conversations in the field. Yet mainstream training practices may have the unintended effects of educating for a physician typology that may be too narrow…

Clinical anatomy education is meant to prepare students for caring for the living, often by working with the dead. By their nature many clinical anatomy education programs privilege topographical form over the donor's humanity. This inbalance between the living and the dead generates tensions between the tangible and the spiritual insofar as…

Anatomy has been integral to medical and health education for centuries, it has also had a significant role in wider public life, as an educational resource, a link to their health, and also as a darker deterrent. Historically, public engagement in anatomy is hallmarked by public dissections of convicted criminals across the globe. Artists,…

Recent usage of virtual reality (VR) technology in surgical training has emerged because of its cost-effectiveness, time savings, and cognition-based feedback generation. However, the quantitative evaluation of its effectiveness in training is still not thoroughly studied. This article demonstrates the effectiveness of a VR-based surgical training…

Small human complex systems, here called co-present groups, are found across all fields of human social life. Complexity thinking suggests why this is so: that these groups, irrespective of formal content, have a meta-function of providing maximum complexity to manage the "indeterminacy" or "uncertainty" that characterises the…

Authenticity in simulation-based learning is linked to cognitive processes implicated in learning. However, evidence on authenticity across formats is insufficient. We compared three case-based settings and investigated the effect of discontinuity in simulation on perceived authenticity. In a quasi-experiment, we compared formats of simulation in…

While explicit conceptual models help to inform research, they are left out of much of the health professions education (HPE) literature. One reason may be the limited understanding about how to develop conceptual models with intention and rigor. Group concept mapping (GCM) is a mixed methods conceptualization approach that has been used to…

Higher education accreditation has spread internationally as a vehicle for quality assurance and improvement but is strongly influenced by accreditation practices in the United States. The organisational structure and processes of seven United States health professions accreditors were analysed to identify common characteristics that reflect…

Empathy is extolled in Western healthcare and medical education as an exemplary quality to cultivate in trainees and providers. Yet it remains an elusive and inadequately understood attribute. It posits a "one size fits all" unidimensional attribute applicable across contexts with scant attention given to its multifaceted dimensions in…

The history of medical education scholarship is often overlooked. Moreover, although productive educational researchers are often recognized for their scholarly contributions in peer-reviewed publications, the impact of others who are not active medical education researchers may be unknown to contemporary educators and scholars. This short paper…

The concept of the Metaverse, viewed as the ultimate manifestation of the Internet, has gained significant attention due to rapid advances in technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain. Acting as a bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, the Metaverse has the potential to offer remarkable experiences to its users.…