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There is a special category of mentor: the person who supports you as much as they support your career. They offer a unique relationship that is rich and powerful. Researchers have tried to better understand this relationship and the other varieties of mentoring relationships. But there is a significant gap in that research: we don't talk about the experience of the sudden loss of a mentor. Sometimes mentoring relationships end--especially if the mentoring was in support of specific goals, learning objectives, or when the relationship simply no longer fits the needs of the mentor or the mentee. But sometimes disease, tragic accidents, or other powers beyond our control intervene; suddenly, relationships with important mentors are simply gone. How do we navigate these losses? In this piece, I reflect on the most powerful mentorship relationships, on the loss thereof, and on the challenges of mourning lost mentors. It celebrates mentors who invest in others, who put "we" ahead of "me." This elegy is for Dr. Joanna Bates and Dr. Meridith Marks--two women who embodied the highest qualities of mentorship.

Introduction: Student Affairs Senior Leaders (SASLs) in the United States lead offices responsible for academic advising, administrative documentation, scheduling, student health, financial aid, and transition to residency, yet they infrequently draw attention in the field's literature. We explore the role of SASLs and how they describe the social space of medical education. Methods: Using a constructivist approach informed by Figured Worlds theory, we conducted a sequential narrative and thematic analysis of the stories SASLs tell about their roles and experiences in the world of medical education. Results: SASLs inhabit complex roles centred on advocating for medical students' academic, personal and social well‐being. Their unique position within the medical school allows them to see the harm to vulnerable students made possible by misalignments inherent within medical education. Yet even with the challenges inherent in the environment, SASLs find reasons for hope. Conclusion: SASLs' identities are full of potential contradictions, but they have a unique view into the often‐chaotic world of medical education. Often left out our literature, student affairs leaders hold unique roles in medical education; here, @kmcowen et al. share data aimed at advancing understanding of their activity to offer powerful insights into our field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contexts and methods for communicating in healthcare and health professions education (HPE) profoundly affect how we understand information, relate to others, and construct our identities. Multimodal analysis provides a method for exploring how we communicate using multiple modes--e.g., language, gestures, images--in concert with each other and within specific contexts. In this paper, we demonstrate how multimodal analysis helps us investigate the ways our communication practices shape healthcare and HPE. We provide an overview of the theoretical underpinnings, traditions, and methodologies of multimodal analysis. Then, we illustrate how to design and conduct a study using one particular approach to multimodal analysis, multimodal (inter)action analysis, using examples from a study focused on clinical reasoning and patient documentation. Finally, we suggest how multimodal analysis can be used to address a variety of HPE topics and contexts, highlighting the unique contributions multimodal analysis can offer to our field.

Scoping reviews are increasingly used in health professions education to synthesize research and scholarship, and to report on the depth and breadth of the literature on a given topic. In this Perspective, we argue that the philosophical stance scholars adopt during the execution of a scoping review, including the meaning they attribute to fundamental concepts such as "knowledge" and "evidence," influences how they gather, analyze, and interpret information obtained from a heterogeneous body of literature. We highlight the principles informing scoping reviews and outline how "epistemology"--the aspect of philosophy that "deals with questions involving the nature of knowledge, the justification of beliefs, and rationality"--should guide methodological considerations, toward the aim of ensuring the production of a high-quality review with defensible and appropriate conclusions. To contextualize our claims, we illustrate some of the methodological challenges we have personally encountered while executing a scoping review on clinical reasoning and reflect on how these challenges could have been reconciled through a broader understanding of the methodology's philosophical foundation. We conclude with a description of lessons we have learned that might usefully inform other scholars who are considering undertaking a scoping review in their own domains of inquiry.

Introduction: Qualitative approaches have flourished in medical education research. Many research articles use the term 'lived experience' to describe the purpose of their study, yet we have noticed contradictory uses and misrepresentations of this term. In this conceptual paper, we consider three sources of these contradictions and misrepresentations: (1) the conflation of perspectives with experiences; (2) the conflation of experience with lived experience; and (3) the conflation of researching lived experience with phenomenology. We offer suggestions to facilitate more precise use of terminology. Argument: Our starting point is to free researchers from unnecessary shackles: Not every problem in medical education should be studied through experience, nor should every study of experience be phenomenological. Data based on participants' perceptions, beliefs, opinions and thoughts, while based on reflections of experiences, are not in and of themselves accounts of experience. Lived experiences are situated, primal and pre‐reflective; perspectives are more abstract. Lived experience—as opposed to experiences as such—deeply attune to bodies, relationality, space and time. There is also a difference between experiences as lived, how a person makes sense of these and what the researcher interprets and represents. Phenomenology is a meaningful approach to the study of lived experience, but other approaches, such as narrative inquiry and self‐study, can also offer useful avenues for undertaking this type of research. Discussion We aim to broaden researchers' scope with this paper and equip researchers with the information they need to be clear about the meaning and use of the terms experience and lived experience. We also hope to open new methodological possibilities for researching experiences as lived and, through highlighting tensions, to prompt researchers of lived experience to strive for ontological closeness and resonance. Interested in researching lived experiences? What are they anyway? Find out in this paper where the authors dive into complexity and offer explanation to enable more precise use of terminology. #meded [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Health professions education (HPE) has adopted the conceptualization of validity as an argument. However, the theoretical and practical aspects of how validity arguments should be developed, used and evaluated in HPE have not been deeply explored. Articulating the argumentation theory undergirding validity and validation can help HPE better operationalise validity as an argument. To better understand this, the authors explored how HPE validity scholars conceptualise assessment validity arguments and argumentation, seeking to understand potential consequences of these views on validation practices. Methods: The authors used critical case sampling to identify HPE assessment validity experts in three ways: (1) participation in a prominent validity research group, (2) appearing in a bibliometric study of HPE validity publications and (3) authorship of recent HPE validity literature. Qualitative semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 16 experts in HPE assessment validity from four different countries. The authors used reflexive thematic analysis to develop themes relevant to their research question. Results: The authors developed three themes grounded in participants' responses: (1) In theory, HPE validity is a social and situated argument. (2) In practice, the absence of audience and evaluation stymies the social nature of HPE validity. (3) Lack of validity argumentation creates and maintains power differentials within HPE. Participants articulated that current HPE validation practices are rooted in post‐positivist epistemology when they should be situated (i.e. context‐dependent), audience‐centric and inclusive. Discussion: When discussing validity argumentation in theory, participants' descriptions reflect an interpretivist lens for evaluation that is misaligned with real‐world validity practices. This misalignment likely arises from HPE's adoption of "validity as an argument" as a slogan, without integrating theoretical and practical principles of argumentation theory. How do HPE experts conceptualize the argumentation aspect of validity? @Midwest_MedPeds @ab_martini @LaraVarpio @erikdriessen @DrDanSchumacher explore the gap between theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenon: Interprofessional healthcare team (IHT) collaboration can produce powerful clinical benefits for patients; however, these benefits are difficult to harness when IHTs work in stressful contexts. Research about stress in healthcare typically examines stress as an individual psychological phenomenon, but stress is not only a person-centered experience. Team stress also affects the team's performance. Unfortunately, research into team stress is limited and scattered across many disciplines. We cannot prepare future healthcare professionals to work as part of IHTs in high-stress environments (e.g., emergency medicine, disaster response) unless we review how this dispersed literature is relevant to medical education. Approach: The authors conducted a narrative review of the literature on team stress experienced by interprofessional teams. The team searched five databases between 1 Jan 1990 and 16 August 2021 using the search terms: teams AND stress AND performance. Guided by four research questions, the authors reviewed and abstracted data from the 22 relevant manuscripts. Findings: Challenging problems, time pressure, life threats, environmental distractors, and communication issues are the stressors that the literature reports that teams faced. Teams reacted to team stress with engagement/cohesion and communication/coordination. Stressors impact team stress by either hindering or improving team performance. Critical thinking/decision-making, team behaviors, and time for task completion were the areas of performance affected by team stress. High-quality communication, non-technical skills training, and shared mental models were identified as performance safeguards for teams experiencing team stress. Insights: The review findings adjust current models explaining drivers of efficient and effective teams within the context of interprofessional teams. By understanding how team stress impacts teams, we can better prepare healthcare professionals to work in IHTs to meet the demands placed on them by the ever-increasing rate of high-stress medical situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The field of medical education is relatively new, and its boundaries are not firmly established. If we had a better understanding of the intricacies of the domain, we might be better equipped to navigate the ever‐changing demands we must address. To that end, we explore medical education as a world wherein leaders harness agency, improvisation, discourse, positionality and power to act. Methods: Using the constructivist theory of figured worlds (FW), we conducted a narrative analysis of the stories medical education senior leaders tell about their roles and experiences in the world of medical education (n = 9). Results: We identified four foundational premises about the world of medical education: (i) medical education stands at the intersection of three interrelated worlds of clinical medicine, hospital administration and university administration; (ii) medical education is shaped by and shapes the clinical learning environment at the local level; (iii) medical education experiences ubiquitous change which is a source of power; and (iv) medical education is energised by relationships between individuals. Discussion: Focusing on the FW theory's notions of agency, improvisation, discourse, positionality and power enabled us to describe the world of medical education as a complex domain existing in a space of conflicting power hierarchies, identities and discourses. Using FW allowed us to see the powerful affordances offered to medical education due to its position between worlds amid unceasing change. McOwen, Varpio, and Konopasky suggest foundational premises about the Figured World of medical education, where leaders harness powerful affordances in service of their mission to produce the next generation of capable physicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the field of health professions education (HPE) continues to evolve, it is necessary to occasionally pause and reflect on the potential effects and outcomes of our research practices. While future‐casting does not guarantee that impending negative consequences will be evaded, the exercise can help us avoid pitfalls. In this paper, we reflect on two terms that have taken hold as powerful idols in HPE research that stand above questioning and apart from critique: patient outcomes and productivity. We argue that these terms, and the ways of thinking they uphold, threaten the sustainability of HPE research—one at the level of the community and one at the level of the scholar. First, we suggest that HPE research's history of endorsing a linear and causal association ethos has driven its quest to connect education to patient outcomes. To ensure the sustainability of HPE scholarship, we must deconstruct and disempower patient outcomes as one of HPE's god‐terms, as the pinnacle goal of educational activities. To be sustained, HPE research needs to value all of its contributions equally. A second god‐term is productivity; it impairs the sustainability of the careers of individual researchers. Problems of honorary authorship, research output expectations, and comparisons with other fields have constructed a space where only scholars with sufficient privilege can prevail. If productivity persists as a god‐term, the field of HPE research could decay into a space where new scholars are silenced—not because they fail to make important contributions, but because access is restricted by existing research metrics. These are two of many god‐terms threatening the sustainability of HPE research. By highlighting patient outcomes and productivity and by acknowledging our own participation in propagating them, we hope to encourage others to recognize how our collective choices threaten the sustainability of our field. @LaraVarpio & @Sherbino warn of the threat inherent in not questioning terms like patient outcomes and productivity. This paper urges a shift towards valuing a wider array of contributions to ensure sustainability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]