When is enough enough? Judging the sufficiency of evidence in medical education

摘要

A confluence of conditions makes it natural to raise questions about the efficiency of our research endeavour in medical education. There is broader engagement in scholarship, expanding the welcome diversity of perspectives and approaches that characterise inquiry in our field. There is also an increase in the outlets available to bring research to others' attention, including new open-access journals, online-only jour-nals, specialty journals and web portals. Nonetheless, the resources available to conduct medical education research are limited and are certainly outpaced by the volume of questions yet unanswered. One's ability to stay abreast of all publications relevant to a research question is constrained by time limitations and, as the number of articles on a given topic increases, the ability to cite any particular one of them is likely to decrease. When is the available evidence enough to justify moving on to new questions? How do we determine that sufficient evidence has been provided to support a given conclusion?