EDITORIAL

Developing international medical education research useful for the Iberoamerican context: who is it up to?

Desarrollar investigación en educación médica internacional que sea útil para el contexto iberoamericano: ¿quién está por la labor?

Manuel João Costa, Jordi Palés-Argullós

Sociedad Española de Educación Médica, SEDEM (M.J. Costa, J. Palés-Argullós). Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud; Universidad de Minho; Braga, Portugal (M.J. Costa). Facultad de Medicina; Universitat de Barcelona; Barcelona, España (J. Palés-Argullós).

Correspondence

Education, like medicine, takes place in the 'real world'. The 'real world' of medical education is made of academic and clinical workplaces, has various interacting individuals from multiple professions interacting between themselves and with patients, and is influenced by cultural and institutional specificities. Therefore, medical education is fairly complex, as it takes on board many variables including the students, the facilitators and further participants, the particular learning situations, the assessment and, the institutional and cultural contexts. All such particularities must be considered by research that is useful to inform advances in (medical) education. This is in contrast, for example, with controlled experimental research, which isolates the research object from external circumstances.

The term 'transferability' refers to the possibility that a certain educational intervention conducted in one context leads to identical results in a different context [1,2]. The more the similarities between the original and new settings, the more the transferability is potentially ensured. In other words, the generalization of findings to Spain or Portugal of findings from studies conducted in Far East or Anglo-Saxon countries, is probably less likely than that of studies from countries which share more cultural traits such like South American countries. Eventually, the research that would best inform developments in education in Iberia and Latin America, should also be developed in the same specific context.

So are we developing the high quality medical education research in Iberoamerica and Iberia which is necessary to inform the development of medical education in our countries? A quick literature search exercise will suggest that the answer is 'probably not'. For example, an analysis of the countries of origin of the 100 most recent primary research papers in the three international reference medical education journals -Medical Education, Academic Medicine and Medical Teacher- published until October 15th 2015, reveals that there is not only one paper from our geographical area. There are, of course, other international and national journals, but this anecdotal indicator, shows that the contribution to international knowledge of medical education of a region with 600 million people, is really quite a small. There are explanations for this reality, which must not go unnoticed. First and foremost, there is the inexistence of tradition in medical education research. Scholars in medicine and biomedicine have generally insufficient awareness of and interest in medical education as a scientific field of educational research. There are still very little funding opportunities for medical education research, and the biological and the clinical sciences the are still privileging over medical education in institutional policies (academical and clinical). The good news is that there are 'cells' of scholars interested in the medical education research in most countries. To develop a striving community, there are many structural challenges to overcome. Therefore, learning about the key elements of success histories from other countries is instrumental. If we were to produce more research, what can we do? A very interesting story comes from the Netherlands.

The Netherlands has achieved a reference status in the world of medical education in about two decades starting in the 1970s. Nowadays, all the nine Dutch medical schools have productive and internationally recognized educational research centers. Bibliometric calculations confirm this successful evolution [2]. A critical historical explanation for success includes 'an active national association for medical education, the appointment of professors in medical education qualified to graduate PhD students, a culture, generally supportive of change, and the close links between research and practice of medical education' [2]. Contrasting the Netherlands with our own Iberoamerican context and looking into the key steps in the development of Dutch medical education, we are missing a strategic policy, an active community and dynamic national postgraduate programs in medical education, in particular PhD programs. We would benefit from a stronger academic community, in which researchers would meet and further develop expertise as medical education scholars. This would be positive for the scientific rigor and international relevance of Iberoamerican studies.

In our context, an effort must be made through the Spanish Society for Medical Education and other national societies from Latin American countries to promote the development of research networks. Research networks identify and develop research around common areas of interest in medical education, depending on the strengths of each of the individuals and groups involved as well as on launching initiatives to exchange ideas and results. Since the critical mass is not currently very large, a transnational collaboration among stakeholders is critical for the development of research in medical education in our geographical and cultural contexts. We urge all those actively interested in medical education to commit to networking and collaborations as one of the top priorities. After all, developing high quality medical education research and ensuring that is useful for our context, is mostly up to us.

Correspondence:
Dr. Jordi Palés Argullós.
Facultad de Medicina.
Universitat de Barcelona.
Casanova, 143.
E-08036 Barcelona.
E-mail: jpales@ub.edu

References

1. Jeanfreau SG, Jack L Jr. Appraising qualitative research in health education: guidelines for public health educators. Health Promot Pract 2010; 11: 612-7.         [ Links ]

2. Jaarsma D, Scherpbier A, Van der Vleuten C, Ten Cate O. Stimulating medical education research in the Netherlands. Med Teach 2013; 35: 277-81.         [ Links ]