Vocational education and training - VET

Background: Competency based medical education (CBME) relies on supervisor narrative comments contained within entrustable professional activities (EPA) for programmatic assessment, but the quality of these supervisor comments is unassessed. There is validity evidence supporting the QuAL (Quality of Assessment for Learning) score for rating the usefulness of short narrative comments in direct observation.

Objective: We sought to establish validity evidence for the QuAL score to rate the quality of supervisor narrative comments contained within an EPA by surveying the key end-users of EPA narrative comments: residents, academic advisors, and competence committee members.

Methods: In 2020, the authors randomly selected 52 de-identified narrative comments from two emergency medicine EPA databases using purposeful sampling. Six collaborators (two residents, two academic advisors, and two competence committee members) were recruited from each of four EM Residency Programs (Saskatchewan, McMaster, Ottawa, and Calgary) to rate these comments with a utility score and the QuAL score.  Correlation between utility and QuAL score were calculated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Sources of variance and reliability were calculated using a generalizability study.

Results: All collaborators (n = 24) completed the full study.  The QuAL score had a high positive correlation with the utility score amongst the residents (r = 0.80) and academic advisors (r = 0.75) and a moderately high correlation amongst competence committee members (r = 0.68).  The generalizability study found that the major source of variance was the comment indicating the tool performs well across raters.

Conclusion: The QuAL score may serve as an outcome measure for program evaluation of supervisors, and as a resource for faculty development.

Despite the long-standing faculty development initiatives for improving teaching skills in the health professions, there is still a growing need for educators who are formally trained in educational theory and practice as health professions schools experience dramatic demand and growth. Graduate programs in health professions education (HPE) provide an avenue for health professions’ faculty continuing professional development to enhance their knowledge and skills for teaching and curriculum leadership roles. There has been a proliferation of certificate, master’s, and doctoral programs in HPE over the last two decades to respond to the growing need for well-prepared faculty educators and program leadership. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe current HPE doctoral programs in United States (U.S.) and Canada.

Conclusions
The workforce shortage facing health professional schools presents an opportunity, or perhaps imperative, for continuing professional development in HPE through certificate, master’s, or doctoral programs. With the current exponential growth of new doctoral programs, there is a need to standardize the title, degree requirements, and further develop core competencies that guide the knowledge and skills HPE graduates are expected to have upon graduation.

Healthcare organizations are using augmented and virtual reality technology to give doctors and nurses better insight on challenging treatments.

The AMA Innovations in Medical Education Webinar Series goal is to help disseminate the work of the AMA Consortium schools to physicians and health care profession educators across the country so innovations can be adapted in their own teaching. The learners targeted are educators at medical schools and other health professions school, especially those involved in interprofessional education.

Healthcare organizations are using augmented and virtual reality technology to give doctors and nurses better insight on challenging treatments.
KEY TAKEAWAYSAugmented and virtual reality technology can help healthcare providers understand how to act in complex situations, such as surgery and childbirth.These immersive platforms enable providers to see into and act in virtual environments, rather than relying on a textbook or a lecture to envision treatment.The technology not only helps academic health systems prepare the next generation of healthcare provider, but can provide continuing education and help doctors and nurses stay up to date on the latest trends in care delivery.

The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa: Evidence from a Decade of Service Delivery Indicators Surveys identifies areas of achievement and constraint in service delivery, shedding light on how service delivery may foster or stunt human capital accumulation.