Widely accepted as a foundational course within health professions education, anatomy is often taken at the beginning of the health professional curriculum and students are expected to be prepared for the rigors of the course. Anatomy preparedness, evaluated in this study, has been defined as matriculating into a graduate or professional anatomy…

While explicit conceptual models help to inform research, they are left out of much of the health professions education (HPE) literature. One reason may be the limited understanding about how to develop conceptual models with intention and rigor. Group concept mapping (GCM) is a mixed methods conceptualization approach that has been used to…

The healthcare professions have traditionally operated in bounded silos during professional training. Regulatory requirements now mandate that students learn from and about each other (WHO, 2010) in interprofessional education (IPE) activities, a standard in all healthcare professions degree programs in the United States. This includes…

To determine the effect of distributed practice (spacing out of study over time) and retrieval practice (recalling information from memory) on academic grades in health professions education and to summarise a range of interventional variables that may affect study outcomes. A systematic search of seven databases in November 2022 which were…

Higher education accreditation has spread internationally as a vehicle for quality assurance and improvement but is strongly influenced by accreditation practices in the United States. The organisational structure and processes of seven United States health professions accreditors were analysed to identify common characteristics that reflect…

Health professional education (HPE) has been affected significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to a combination of disruption to healthcare systems, changes to workforce needs, the effects on tertiary education provision and a necessity to innovate. While a challenging time, these were also opportunities in disguise. There is evidence that HPE…

Context: Review of the origins, history, and attributes of primary care demonstrates continued challenges for the future of primary care and care delivery. The profession of athletic training may benefit from a critical self-review to examine its readiness to assist in reinventing primary care. Objective: To explore parity between primary care…

Empathy is extolled in Western healthcare and medical education as an exemplary quality to cultivate in trainees and providers. Yet it remains an elusive and inadequately understood attribute. It posits a "one size fits all" unidimensional attribute applicable across contexts with scant attention given to its multifaceted dimensions in…

New public management ideals and standards have become increasingly adhered to in health professions education; this is particularly apparent in high-stakes assessment, as a gateway to practice. Using an Institutional Ethnographic approach, we looked at the work involved in running high-stakes Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs) throughout…

The conceptual complexity of employability remains a barrier for its integration into discipline-based curricula. In the health professions, a particular challenge lies in integrating employability with the dominant paradigms of competency and professionalism. In this study, we explore these contextual challenges, and present the rationale and…

There is an expectation that health professions schools respond to priority societal health needs. This expectation is largely based on the underlying assumption that schools are aware of the priority needs in their communities. This paper demonstrates how open-access, pan-national health data can be used to create a reliable health index to…

Scholarly practitioners are broadly defined as healthcare professionals that address critical practice problems using theory, scientific evidence, and practice-based knowledge. Though scholarly practice is included in most competency frameworks, it is unclear what scholarly practice "is," how it "develops" and how it is…

Purpose: Job competency frameworks are based on the listing skills required for a job. The assumption is that if a candidate is presumed to have the skills, then the candidate should be able to do the job. Thus, employers hope to identify prospective employees having the required skills. However, this may differ from knowing whether the employee…

To become skilled physicians, medical students must master surface anatomy. However, the study of surface anatomy is less emphasized in medical and allied health science curricula, and the time devoted to direct engagement with the human body is limited. This scoping review was designed to answer one research question: "What are the elements…

Threshold concepts (TCs) are increasingly used in health professions education (HPE) research. TCs are claimed to be conceptual gateways which are often traversed with substantial difficulty. In this paper, we report on a scoping review investigating the following research question: What is the scope and nature of the currently available research…