education

INTRODUCTION: The "Open Space Technology" (OST) is an innovative group process introduced by Harrison Owen in 1997. There is some evidence for its effectiveness in education quality improvement. However, its application in higher education has not been reported. Our objective was to apply a modified OST as a quality improvement tool in a postgraduate training quality improvement program at a university hospital in Argentina. METHODS: OST is a method in which a program's participants propose and discuss topics of their interest with an aim that had been defined for them by coordinators...

CONTEXT: The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is a $US 130 million program funded by the United States government supporting 13 African medical schools to increase the quantity, quality, and retention of physicians in underserved areas. This paper examines how community-based education (CBE) is evolving at MEPI schools to achieve these goals. METHODS: We utilized data from the first two years of site visits and surveys to characterize CBE efforts across the MEPI network and provide detailed descriptions of three models of CBE among the MEPI programs...

BACKGROUND: Medical education is changing. Increasingly, there are calls for major curriculum reform based on premises of what might improve undergraduate medical education. Against this background, innovative methods of teaching and learning have emerged. Problem-based and student-centered approaches are increasingly being adopted with less reliance on the conventional didactic lecture forums. OBJECTIVE: To compare the effects of two different instructional methods (problem based learning and conventional teaching), on the professional competencies of pre-registration house officers (PRHOs) or interns, as perceived by the graduates themselves and their clinical supervisors...