Research in medical education: doctoral dissertation reports.

摘要

Research in medical education is thriving. My last editorial board meeting of Medical Teacher brought home to me how incredibly steep a rise we have seen in the number of paper submissions in recent years. Apparently, more and more people are engaging in medical education research. I know of no other domain that has so many international journals in education. I lost the count after 15, and the list is still growing. Fortunately, quality is remaining in step with the quantity and we see a steady increase in the quality of papers. Be that as it may, most BEME reviews typically end with a plea for more systematic research and higher quality research in the area under review. Authors reflecting on the state of affairs in medical education research habitually advocate fewer descriptive and justification studies in the favour of more clarification studies (Cook et al. 2008) using more theory to underpin the research (Albert et al. 2007). Obviously, the demand for more excellence in research requires increasing rigour in the review of our research prior to publication. We should not, however, be doing this blindly.