Useful Reads

A Model for Improving Scholarly Activity for Pediatrics Residents

Even with limited resources, implementing a systematic research curriculum with active participation of faculty mentors can help residents improve their research performance and meet the scholarly activity required by the Residency Review Committee successfully. Read this paper to gain insights on how a small community hospital with limited resources in Queens, New York, address potential deficiencies in resident scholarly activity by designing and implementing a new research curriculum to stimulate residents' research interests and activities.

Adult Learning Theories and Medical Education: A Review

The complexity of practising medicine and healthcare has to be tackled by appropriate educational strategies and approaches in medical education. However, the ways in which adult learners assimilate knowledge, skills and attitudes vary. There are several prevalent theories that explain how adults learn. Gain insights from this article on the ways to apply the various educational theories when teaching adult learners with different learning styles.

Assessment in Medical Education; What Are We Trying to Achieve?

Assessment is a central feature of teaching and curriculum. It is one of the most significant influences on a student’s experience of higher education and improving assessment has a huge impact on the quality of learning. Gain insights from this abstract on the current trends in assessments and explore the benefits and limitations associated with the various forms of assessment.

Basic Steps in Establishing Effective Small Group Teaching Session in Medical School

Small-group teaching and learning has become more popular as it encourages students in their studies and enhances the process of deep learning. Gain insights from this article on the basic steps in establishing effective small group teaching sessions and the different types of small group teaching methods.

Brief on Writing Successful Abstract

How can you write a successful abstract and increase your chance for it to be shortlisted? The abstract for an article submitted to a clinical or academic journal often gets little attention in the manuscript preparation process. The abstract is the most crucial piece of information that summarises your scholarly work. If you are interested to submit abstracts for the SingHealth Duke-NUS Education Conference 2017, get tips on writing a successful abstract and read more about the various uses of the abstract for publications and presentations in healthcare.

Challenging Learning Situations in Medical Education

How can educators diagnose and help learners overcome challenges in learning? To conduct a reliable objective educational examination, it is crucial that educators observe learners in various situations and compare it with peers’ opinions. Employing a 360-degree evaluation is therefore beneficial. Faculty may also conduct educational diagnosis to identify the cause of learning difficulties. External situational factors will also exacerbate academic difficulties faced by learners.

Characteristics of Successful and Failed Mentoring Relationships: A Qualitative Study Across Two Academic Health Centers

Successful mentorship is vital to career success and offers professional development opportunities for both mentors and mentees. However, faculty members may face challenges in offering effective mentorship. Gain insights from this article on the characteristics of effective mentors and mentees, key features of a successful mentoring relationship, as well as the consequences of a failed mentoring relationship.

Core Principles of Assessment in Competency-based Medical Education (Domain 3 - Assessment of Learning)

The Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) is an approach to designing medical training that is organised and structured around a competency framework. It promises more flexibility and learner-centeredness as the emphasis on time-based training is reduced. Gain insights from this presentation on the core principles for implementing a CBME programme to ensure its effectiveness, and identify enablers and barriers to optimise assessment approaches in your own programme.

Deliberate Experiential Learning: Mastering the Art of Learning from Experience

Learning involves repeated practice. However, time spent practicing does not necessarily lead to learning and improved performance. As such, cultivating deliberate experiential learning practices can help us become more intentional about how we think and learn in a given environment. Gain insights from this article on how the experiential learning model can be used to approach learning in a deliberate way, increase learning effectiveness and develop our own unique style of learning.

Does What We Write Matter?

Written comments by educators provide written foundation for grade narratives and deans’ letters, and play an important role in the student’s professional development. In this study, it was concluded that helpful comments demonstrates knowledge of the learner, and provides specific examples of appropriate behaviour to be reinforced or inappropriate behaviour to be eliminated. Unhelpful comments are often non-actionable and non-specific. Learn about how you can write effective feedback to enhance learners’ performance in this article.

Stress and burnout are well documented risk factors that may compromise patient care and significantly impact a healthcare professional’s career. However, the “care of the caregiver” is a topic that has not been significantly addressed in the education of healthcare professionals due to the highly competitive, stressful and often dysfunctional work environments. Gain insights from this article on the curricular innovations that will help healthcare professionals cultivate resilience and wellbeing in their personal and professional lives. Strategies to address system issues that contribute to unhealthy learning and work environments will also be discussed.    

Effective Clinical Education: Strategies for Teaching Medical Students and Residents in the Office

Educators often face the challenge of providing quality medical care, maintaining efficiency, and incorporating meaningful education for learners. Numerous teaching strategies to address these challenges have been described in the medical educational literature, but only a few strategies have been evaluated for their impact on education. Gain insights from this abstract on the teaching strategies that can be used to improve educational processes and outcomes.

Eight Steps to Active Lecturing

Classroom teaching is the most common way to teach complex information to learners. What are the eight steps and strategies to active lecturing and connect with your learners in the classroom? In this article, find out how the use of analogies, metaphors, similes, and images can effectively connect our learners and help them grasp the concepts being discussed.   

Facilitating Small Group Work

Working together in small groups prepares learners to develop from passive information receivers into independent, task-orientated learners, who are equipped for effective, self-directed learning throughout their professional careers. However, facilitating small groups can be frustrating and awkward for educators who are used to sharing knowledge through didactic lectures. Gain insights from this article on how to be a successful small group facilitator and make small group work both effective and enjoyable for your learners.

Generational Changes and their Impact in the Classroom: Teaching Generation Me

The learners today, Generation Me, differ from those in the past in the way they use information and learn. On average, Generation Me learners have high expectations, are more assertive, report higher narcissism, and are less inclined to read long passages of text. As such, there is a growing challenge for educators to accommodate to this generation’s preferences while ensuring high standards of learning. Gain insights from this article on the tips and best practices when it comes to teaching the new generation of learners.

Guidelines: The Do’s, Don’ts and Don’t Knows of Feedback for Clinical Education

Giving feedback clarifies the learners' awareness of their developing competencies, enhances their self-efficacy for making progress, challenges them to set objectives for improvement, and facilitates their development of strategies to enable improvement to occur. However, despite its importance, effective feedback remains difficult to achieve in the context of clinical education. Gain insights from this article on the guidelines and best practices in delivering meaningful feedback for educators and learners. 

Helpful and Unhelpful Feedback Techniques

Giving feedback is central to medical education in promoting learning and ensuring that standards are met, The avoidance of giving feedback, although understandable, is unwarranted. When done well, even corrective feedback is seen as helpful and highly appreciated. Gain insights from this article on the recommended techniques necessary for giving effective feedback.

How to Write Your First Research Paper

Refreshing Lecturing: A Guide for Lecturer

Lectures are a substantial part of the learning experiences of learners and the most ubiquitous method of teaching. It is an important constituent of a teacher’s repertoire of teaching methods and an economical and efficient method of conveying information to large groups of students. Specifically written for educators in the healthcare professions, this guide discusses ways to refresh lecturing approaches as well as suggestions for evaluating lectures.

Student Perceptions of Effective Small Group Teaching

What makes for an effective small group? This study assessed student perceptions of effective small group teaching during preclinical training in medical school. Effective small group tutors possess the ability to promote problem solving and critical thinking. Students identified six factors for effective small group teaching, (1) effective small group tutors, (2) a positive group atmosphere, (3) active student participation, (4) adherence to small group goals, (5) clinical relevance and integration, and (6) cases that promote thinking and problem solving.

Teaching in the Clinical Environment

Most clinical teachers have received rigorous training in medical knowledge and skills, but little to none in teaching. Expanding clinical responsibilities and shrinking teaching hours are challenges that clinician educators often face as they strive for efficacy and excellence in teaching. In this AMEE Guide, read about the many challenges for teachers in the clinical environment. Gain practical teaching tip and find out how to apply relevant educational theories to the clinical education environment.

Teaching Residents to Teach: The Impact of Multidisciplinary Longitudinal Curriculum to Improve Teaching Skills

Residents often have significant responsibilities in the education of medical students and junior doctors in the inpatient wards. But most residents have not received formal training and instruction on effective teaching. Gain insights from this article on how residents can improve their teaching skills and benefit from a multidisciplinary learning group through a successful teaching curriculum.

The Correlation of Stress in Residency With Future Stress and Burnout: A 10-Year Prospective Cohort Study

It is common for medical students, residents and practicing physicians to display signs of stress. However, it is unclear whether stress during residency persists into professional practice or is associated with future burnout. In this article, the authors conducted a prospective cohort study over a 10 year period where medical residents were surveyed to measure stress in residency, and subsequently current stress and burnout in professional practice 10 years later.

The Dreyfus Model of Clinical Problem-solving Skills Acquisition: A Critical Perspective

The Dreyfus model describes how individuals progress through various levels in their acquisition of skills, and subsumes ideas with regard to how individuals learn. It plays an important role in modelling how physicians acquire clinical skills in healthcare education. However, it is debatable whether the model can explain the acquisition of clinical skills due to the complex nature of clinical problem-solving skills, and the rich interplay between the implicit and explicit forms of knowledge. Gain insights from this article on the analysis and debate of the role of the Dreyfus model.

Towards An Understanding of Resilience and Its Relevance to Medical Training

Developing professionalism is a core expectation of modern health profession education. To ensure professionalism, healthcare professionals need to be able to care for themselves in order to offer the best care to their patients. For educators, the well-being of our learners is an intrinsic concern: healthcare professionals and learners need to be prepared for the challenges they face not just in practice, but during training itself. Gain insights from this article on the educational approaches to strengthen professional resilience in healthcare education and training.

Twelve Tips for Effective Lecturing in a PBL Curriculum

The role of the educator is changed drastically from a lecturer to a facilitator in a problem-based learning (PBL) setting. This places new demands on the educators as they must know the overall aims of the lectures, their context in the course, their relation to the subsequent examinations and the underlying educational philosophy in addition to subject knowledge. Gain tips from this abstract on transforming didactic lectures to interactive sessions to enhance understanding, augment critical thinking and promote self-directed learning among learners.

Twelve Tips for Evaluating Educational Programmes

Twelve Tips for Improving the Effectiveness of Web-based Multimedia Instruction for Clinical Learners

Using educational technology does not necessarily make medical education more effective as it is dependent on many factors, such as the type of technology used and the learning situation. Web-based multimedia instruction (WBMI) provides learners with self-directed independent learning opportunities based on didactic material enhanced with multimedia features. Gain insights from this article on how to effectively use WBMI in clinical teaching programmes to ensure that it will meet both the learners’ and programme’s needs.

Twelve Tips on Writing Abstracts and Titles