The concepts of metacognitive reflection, reflection, and metacognition are distinct but have undergone shifts in meaning as they migrated into medical education. Conceptual clarity is essential to the construction of the knowledge base of medical education and its educational interventions. We conducted a theoretical integrative review across…

Craft specialties such as surgery endured widespread disruption to postgraduate education and training during the pandemic. Despite the expansive literature on rapid adaptations and innovations, generalisability of these descriptions is limited by scarce use of theory-driven methods. In this research, we explored UK surgical trainees' (n = 46) and…

Conferences enable rapid information sharing and networking that are vital to career development within academic communities. Addressing diverse attendee needs is challenging and getting it wrong wastes resources and dampens enthusiasm for the field. This study explores whether, and how, motivations for attendance can be grouped in relation to…

Background: It has been widely recognized that ethics is central to the practice of medicine. Since physicians' identities are heavily influenced by their basic medical training, education in ethics during this period would facilitate their professional development. To enable this, some global and national organizations have published guidelines…

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…

As trainees resist social harm and injustice in medicine, they must navigate the tension between pushing too hard and risking their reputation, or not enough and risking no change at all. We explore the discernment process by examining what trainees attend to moments before and while they are resisting to understand how they manage this tension.…

Assessment is more educationally effective when learners engage with assessment processes and perceive the feedback received as credible. With the goal of optimizing the educational value of assessment in medical education, we mapped the primary literature to identify factors that may affect a learner's perceptions of the credibility of assessment…

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…

Medical schools have a duty of care to support student wellbeing but there is little guidance on how to translate this mandate into practice. Often schools focus on implementing and reporting individual-level interventions which typically only address one aspect of wellbeing. Conversely, less attention has been paid to holistic school-wide…

The hidden curriculum has been investigated as a powerful force on medical student learning and ongoing physician professional development. Previous studies have largely focused on medical students' experiences as 'receivers' of the hidden curriculum. This study examined how residents and newly graduated physicians conceived of their roles as…

Despite explanations in the literature, a returning question in the use of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) is how to distinguish them from competencies and skills. In this article, we attempt to analyze the causes of the frequent confusion and conflation of EPAs with competencies and skills, and argue why the distinction is important…

Many medical schools incorporate assessments of personal characteristics, including personality traits, in their selection process. However, little is known about whether changes in personality traits during medical training affect the predictive validity of personality assessments. The present study addressed this issue by examining the stability…

The feasibility of implicitly assessing medical student burnout was explored, using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), to measure longitudinal student burnout over the first two years of medical school and directly comparing it with an existing explicit measure of burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory; MBI). Three successive cohorts…

Reflection is a complex concept in medical education research. No consensus exists on what reflection exactly entails; thus far, cross-comparing empirical findings has not resulted in definite evidence on how to foster reflection. The concept is as slippery as soap. This leaves the research field with the question, 'how can research approach the…

Evidence based medicine (EBM) has been synonymous to delivery of quality care for almost thirty years. Since the movement's inception, the assumption has been that decisions based on high quality evidence would translate to better care for patients. Despite EBM's many attractive features and the substantive attention it has received in the…