Foundations of Health Professions Education Research: Principles, Perspectives and Practices

Educating healthcare students and professionals is critical to the long-term improvement of human health. Health professions education research (HPER) is a growing field with enormous potential to enrich the education of medical, nursing, and allied health students and professionals. There is still, however, an urgent need for a textbook focusing on the foundations of HPER that will help new and existing HPE researchers ground their work in research philosophies, evidence-based methodologies, and proven best practices. "Foundations of Health Professions Education Research" meets this need with a broad-based and accessible introduction to the foundations of HPER. Rooted in the latest theoretical and methodological advances, this book takes a global and interdisciplinary approach, designed to provide the widest possible range of backgrounds with a working knowledge of HPER. It promises to become an indispensable contribution to this growing field of increasingly rigorous research. "Foundations of Health Professions Education Research" readers will also find: (1) An authorial team with decades of combined HPER experience on multiple continents; (2) Educational features such as learning outcomes, illustrative case studies, discussion points, and exercises to facilitate understanding and retention; and (3) Detailed discussion of different approaches to HPER including scientific, realist, interpretivist, critical, and pragmatic approaches alongside a range of topics taking you through your entire research journey. "Foundations of Health Professions Education Research" is a useful reference for both new and experienced HPE researchers, including postgraduate students studying HPER.