Educational research report 2011

SAPC Educational Research Special Interest Group

2010-11 Annual Report

Chair – Professor Bob McKinley

Following our 2010 meeting in at the Norwich ASM it was agreed that the former “Education” SIG should be renamed as the “Educational Research” SIG. This decision was made firstly in order to recognise the fact that medical education is a core activity within SAPC and not a special interest.  The Society does have other fora where general educational issues can be raised including the now well established Heads of Teaching (HoTs) Group with a representative from all SAPC departments.  A second reason was to provide greater focus for the SIG on supporting members in developing educational research activity The reflected a feeling that the potential for SAPC to raise the profile and impact of educational research by means of support and collaboration has not been fully exploited.

It is generally agreed that research into undergraduate education in primary care has so far struggled to develop a reputation for high quality and high impact. This is likely to relate to several factors including difficulty attracting major funders, a tendency for studies to be too small, and poor generalisibility of what is often single institution data sampling.  There has also perhaps been a lack of focus on studying aspects of medical education which relate directly to improving patient care. Given the volume and range of teaching and training now taking place in the community, and the likelihood that this will increase in the future, this is an unsatisfactory situation. We believe that by developing and promoting the Education Research SIG SAPC could provide leadership and direction needed to promote excellence in this area. By supporting collaboration between members and member departments in the development of research questions, sharing of data and methodological expertise we would hope that members would  be better positioned to attract major external long-term funding and produce higher quality research and higher impact publications.

As a first step we have drafted a new set of aims for the SIG which will be presented at the July 2011 meeting. The draft aims for the Educational Research SIG from 2011 are as follows:

• To provide means for sharing ideas and innovations related to primary care medical education
• To encourage and facilitate the conducting of high quality research in areas related to medical education
• To support the dissemination and implementation of medical education research findings
• To maintain liaison with other organisations with similar interests in medical education or educational research
• To support the training and education of educational researchers within SAPC

The main items of discussion at this year’s SIG meeting in Norwich were

1. The establishment of a new Educational Research Working Group within the NIHR National School for Primary Care Research. This presents a welcome new opportunity for SPCR departments to bid for significant funding for large, collaborative educational research projects. Although this funding stream is open only to the eight SPCR member departments it was felt generally to be a very positive development. Even if projects are established within member departments there could well be related opportunities for collaboration in research projects within the wider SAPC community
2. The establishment of a support network for members undertaking educational doctorates.  We were encouraged to hear of the increasing numbers of members engaging in doctoral studies within the field of primary care medical education (MD,PhD,EdD). It was agreed that developing a network for these students would be a positive step and Alex Harding (Peninsula) agreed to lead on this

Joe Rosenthal

Bob McKinley

April 2011

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