Search

On 25 July 2022, the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Special Interest Group of the Association for Medical Education in Europe came together to open up discussions during a live webinar on 'Exploring the Evolution of CPD'. The objective was to bring together global medical educators to consider perspectives of CPD from the role of global lifelong learners, the role of educators and the role of education providers and health regulators. The landscape of CPD is evolving, and the roles of each key player must include specific actions for facilitated change. Delivering competency outcomes-based learning, fit for purpose, to lifelong learners in health will require (1) learner agency, (2) leadership from educators and (3) providers of lifelong learning to come together to improve delivery of CPD that leads to meaningful change in practice care delivery.

Item does not contain fulltext Moving towards person-centered care, with equal partnership between healthcare professionals and patients, requires a solid role for the patient in the education of students and professionals. Patients can be involved as teachers, assessors, curriculum developers, and policy-makers. Yet, many of the initiatives with patients are isolated, small events for targeted groups and there is a lack of patient involvement at the institutional level. To support educators in involving patients, both at the institutional level and at single educational encounters, we offer twelve practical tips. This paper came about through an innovative collaboration between healthcare professionals, educators, teachers, and patients. These tips can be used as a tool to start or reinforce patient involvement in health professions education and provide guidance on how to make it a sustainable part of the curriculum. The article involves organizational conditions for success, tips for sustainable partnerships, ideas for curriculum design and proposes concrete teaching strategies. Finally, besides practical tips, we stress that involving patients in education is not business as usual, and paradoxically this needs to be acknowledged before it can become business as usual. 01 januari 2023

Internal quality assurance (IQA) is one of the core support systems on which schools in the health professions rely to ensure the quality of their educational processes. Through IQA they demonstrate being in control of their educational quality to accrediting bodies and continuously improve and enhance their educational programmes. Although its need is acknowledged by all stakeholders, creating a system of quality assurance has often led to establishing a 'tick-box' exercise overly focusing on quality control while neglecting quality improvement and enhancement. This AMEE Guide uses the concept of quality culture to describe the various dimensions that need to be addressed to move beyond the tick-box exercise. Quality culture can be defined as an organisational culture which consists of a structural/managerial aspect and a cultural/psychological aspect. As such this AMEE Guide addresses tools and processes to further an educational quality culture while also addressing ways in which individual and collective awareness of and commitment to educational quality can be fostered. By using cases within health professions education of both formal and informal learning settings, examples will be provided of how the diverse dimensions of a quality culture can be addressed in practice.

At the end of his mandate, Gernot Rohde (European Respiratory Society (ERS) Education Council Chair 2014–2017) and the ERS Education Council had the opportunity to reflect on the goals achieved over 3 years and the challenges in implementing continuing professional development (CPD) programmes for our respiratory specialists. The third ERS Education Research Seminar took place in Frankfurt, Germany, in June 2017 with >30 international experts in medical education and respiratory medicine. >1 year later, we can now reflect on the ERS Education Seminar, the achievements of the Education Council over 3 years, and the continuing path to better understand the education needs of practicing respiratory medicine specialists. This article reflects on the core principles of medical education and offers a reflection on CPD for respiratory professionals within ERS Education., A reflection on @EuroRespSoc education, a learning pathway for the future: better practice, better physicians, better patients http://bit.ly/2XHmr3J

Background Despite increasing calls for patient and public involvement in health-care quality improvement, the question of how patient evaluations can contribute to physician learning and performance assessment has received scant attention. Objective The objective of this study was to explore, amid calls for patient involvement in quality assurance, patients' perspectives on their role in the evaluation of physician performance and to support physicians' learning and decision making on professional competence. Design A qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews. Setting and participants The study took place in a secondary care setting in the Netherlands. The authors selected 25 patients from two Dutch hospitals and through the Dutch Lung Foundation, using purposive sampling. Methods Data were analysed according to the principles of template analysis, based on an a priori coding framework developed from the literature about patient empowerment, feedback and performance assessment. Results The analysis unearthed three predominant patient perspectives: the proactive perspective, the restrained perspective and the outsider perspective. These perspectives differed in terms of perceived power dynamics within the doctor-patient relationship, patients' perceived ability, and willingness to provide feedback and evaluate their physician's performance. Patients' perspectives thus affected the role patients envisaged for themselves in evaluating physician performance. Discussion and conclusion Although not all patients are equally suitable or willing to be involved, patients can play a role in evaluating physician performance and continuing training through formative approaches. To involve patients successfully, it is imperative to distinguish between different patient perspectives and empower patients by ensuring a safe environment for feedback.

To create an overview on re-certification procedures across the globe, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) organised an educational forum on “Re-certification: current practice and the future” during the 2016 International Congress in London, UK. During this educational forum, the importance of re-certification and international procedures were discussed. Panellists from Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the USA presented their respective national re-certification systems., Re-certification of respiratory professionals: a report of an @ERStalk education forum held at #ERSLDN16 http://ow.ly/pUKY30bzcrK

PurposeWe expect physicians to be lifelong learners. Learning from clinical practice is an important potential source for that learning. To support physicians in this process, a better understanding of how they learn in clinical practice is necessary. This study investigates how physicians use informal feedback as learning cues to adjust their communication from interactions with patients in the outpatient setting.MethodsTo understand physicians’ use of informal feedback, we combined non-participant ethnographic observations with semi-structured interviews. We enrolled 10 respiratory physicians and observed 100 physician-patient interactions at one academic and one non-academic hospital in the Netherlands. Data collection and analysis were performed iteratively according to the principles of constructivist grounded theory. Our conceptual model describes how physicians use cues to reflect on and adjust their communication as well as to further develop their adaptive expertise.ResultsIn addition to vast variations within and across patient encounters, we observed recurring patterns in physicians’ communications in reaction to specific learning cues. Physicians had learnt to recognise and use different cues to adjust their communication in patient encounters. They established a ‘communication repertoire’ based on multiple patient interactions, which many saw as learning opportunities, contributing to the development of adaptive expertise. Our findings show differences in physicians’ sensitivity to recognising learning opportunities in daily practice which was further influenced by contextual, personal and interpersonal factors. Whereas some reported to have little inclination to change, others used critical incidents to fine-tune their communication repertoire, while others constantly reshaped it, seeking learning opportunities in their daily work.ConclusionsThere is a large variation in how physicians use learning cues from daily practice. Learning from daily practice is a collaborative effort and requires a culture that promotes lifelong learning. Raising physicians’ awareness of experiences as potential learning opportunities might enhance their development of adaptive expertise.

Each year as part of its International Congress, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) dedicates a session to discuss the key themes in medical education affecting respiratory professionals working not only throughout Europe but worldwide. The forum is open to national societies, public health officials and patient representatives, as well as individual Congress delegates with an interest in medical education., The ERS International Congress educational forum brings together experts to advance respiratory medicine http://ow.ly/hP9k30kz6ZM

The increasing mobility of patients and healthcare professionals across the countries of Europe has highlighted the wide variations in both medical training, and provision of medical competency and skills. The maintenance of the standards defining competency and skills have national and international implications and have proved challenging for national regulatory bodies. Thus each nation has introduced different types of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), recertification and relicensing systems. At the Symposium entitled: “ ‘Certified … now what?’ On the Challenges of Lifelong Learning” in August 2017 at the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) annual conference, we reviewed differing European national relicensing systems were reviewed. The review highlighted various lifelong learning and competence assessment approaches using examples from different medical specialties across several European countries.