Lectures and seminars Welcome to a seminar with Professor Kevin Eva on the evolution of health professional education scholarship

Health professional education is rife with diversity of roles, scholarly backgrounds, methodological approaches, and conceptual outlooks. That diversity is an essential condition for the field’s current success and continued maturation, but it simultaneously creates challenges with respect to defining quality in a uniform and productive manner.  

This talk will be aimed at doing that by prompting reflection on trends in health professional education research that can enable discussion about how the field’s priorities, its conception of quality and, hence, its scholarship, have evolved. 

Methodological rigour is important, but we must recognize that scientific progress has little to do with method. Practical relevance is important, but we must recognize that context plays such an essential role in education that proof is a flawed concept. In complex domains we are better served by focusing attention on what empirical data are required to improve our thinking about the practical goals with which we struggle, striving constantly for quality improvement, rather than trusting that a single correct answer could ever be found. Attendees will, thus, be encouraged to embrace the phrase “it depends” and to consider the implications of that outlook for their research, publication, and dissemination efforts.

Kevin Eva

Professor Kevin Eva is the 2022 winner of KIPRIME and editor of the journal Medical Education. Please read more about professor Kevin Eva.

Register for the seminar

An Outlook invitation with details on exact location (room) will be sent out to those who have registered though the link on Monday 6 October.