Keynote: Changing and Unchanging Medical Education
Dr. Rachel Ellaway is Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, and Director of the Office of Health and Medical Education Scholarship for the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. She is also the editor in chief of the journal Advances in Health Sciences Education (AHSE), and she was the creator and Maîtresse de Cérémonies of the AMEE Fringe for many years. As an internationally acclaimed education scholar her work has encompassed many aspects and debates in contemporary medical education including educational technologies, philosophy of educational science, and professional resistance. Her team recently published international guidelines for medical education that is inclusive of transgender and nonbinary persons. Her contributions have been recognized in many awards including the CAME Ian Hart Award for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Education, the RCPSC Duncan Graham Award for Outstanding Contribution to Medical Education, the AFMC President’s Award for Exemplary National Leadership in Academic Medicine, and the Meridith Marks Mentorship Award.
Abstract
In some ways, medical education is in a state of constant flux and change, yet in other ways medical education today is not so different from the way it looked a century ago. We have embraced problem-based learning, OSCEs, digital technologies, and competency based medical education, yet we still focus on apprenticeships, vocation, and high stakes exams. In this keynote presentation, Dr. Ellaway will explore the paradox that medical educators can be simultaneously obsessed with quality improvement and innovation and yet act in ways that resist change and embrace inertia. She will consider different theories of change and what they can tell us, along with emerging (and perhaps troubling) concepts of precision medical education and professional resistance. A constant theme in the presentation will be the question “how much is enough?”. How much change, how much stability, how much innovation, and how much stewardship is enough? Although these questions cannot be answered in any absolute way, the exploration of medical education as something that is simultaneously in a permanent state of change and in a permanent state of inertia will be illuminating!
Learning objectives
By the end of this session participants will be able to:
- Describe major aspects of change and inertia in medical education today.
- Apply theories of change to their own work as residents and medical educators.
- Appraise the challenges of education in medical physics in new and illuminating ways.