Ian Davison

University of Birmingham · School of Education

Introduction: The supervisory relationship is a key source of support for postgraduate GP trainees in the United Kingdom. This article focuses on the institutional influences on GP supervision through an analysis of training documentation. Methods: Training documents were identified through a search of key sources of institutional influence: Genera...

Recruitment to General Practice (GP) is currently low in many countries. Here we focus on two binary choices for junior doctors: first, whether to apply to GP; second, whether to accept a GP training place if offered. Previous attitudinal studies have indicated factors claimed to affect recruitment. The current study goes further by quantifying the...

Engagement with workplace based assessment (WBA) is the plea of the stakeholder; striving for meaningful educational dialogues and early detection of difficulty, and moving away from a tick‐box, ‘gaming’ approach to these assessments. However, ask a postgraduate trainee about their last WBA encounter, and it may come as no surprise that they believ...

Objectives: The educational alliance is argued to be at the heart of supervision in medical education. This review aims to map the research field and develop a conceptualisation of the nature of such educational alliances within postgraduate supervision for general practitioners. Methods: An integrative review of the international literature on...

Recruitment and selection are critical components of human resource management. They influence both the quantity and quality of the healthcare workforce. In this article, we use two different examples of primary care workers, General Practitioners in the UK and Community Health Workers in low- and middle- income countries, to illustrate how recruit...

A key aspect of support in UK General Practice training is the trainee–trainer supervisory relationship. A small but significant number of trainees struggle in training, and relationship ‘breakdown’ can result. This study aims to better understand the nature of the supervisory interaction when a trainee faces difficulty. Using Bordin’s ‘Supervisory...

Background There is currently a shortage of qualified GPs in the UK and not all of the training posts available each year are filled. Changing the way in which GP trainees are selected could help increase the training post fill rate and the number of new entrants to the GP Register. The aim of this study was to model the impact of changing the sele...

Character education is of growing importance in educational discourse. The Knightly Virtues programme draws on selected classic stories to teach eight moral virtues to nine- to 11-year-olds; it has proved to be hugely popular with UK schools. A finding of the trial was the different levels of ‘virtue literacy’ in faith and non-faith schools. This a...

This article reports on an innovative empirical research project, using a quasi-experimental trial, in which 9–11-year-olds learned about character and virtues through the exploration of four classic stories. The overall aim of the programme was to enhance virtue literacy. Virtue literacy is defined as the knowledge, understanding and application o...

Based on the responses of 74 interviews from 7 dialysis centres, Ian Davison, Sandra Cooke and Robin Gutteridge argue that shared care shouldn't just be seen as a stepping-stone to home haemodialysis. Reasons for this include increased job satisfaction of nursing staff and ultimately more patients dialysing at home. Six organisational recommendatio...

Patients with long-term conditions may benefit from involvement in decision-making and the management of their condition. This requires nurses to have a training role, which may conflict with their traditional identity as nurses. To explore the differences in attitudes and behaviours of 'carer' and 'trainer' nurses to patients taking increasing res...

The Knightly Virtues programme was inspired by the idea that stories of literary significance might be used in primary schools for teaching and learning about qualities of virtuous character. Devised by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, the programme was designed for 9 to 11 year olds and drew on selected classic stories to help teach m...

This report presents the findings of the My Character Feasibility Study which ran from May 2011 to April 2014 and involved over 1000 young people from across the UK. The aim of the study was to develop a better understanding of how interventions designed to develop character might enhance moral formation and future-mindedness in young people. This...

This article examines the fairness, effectiveness (validity and reliability) and acceptability of the 2009 selection processes for 10 hospital specialties, using data from a nationwide evaluation of 33 selection processes across the UK.

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is one component of the medical education curriculum and there is a growing interest in the use of e-learning to support this area of the curriculum. The aims of this research were to undertake a pilot feasibility and efficacy trial to test the feasibility of undertaking experimental research in a medic...

Introduced in 2006, the objective structured public health examination (OSPHE) is a part of the examination for the UK Membership of the Faculty of Public Health. Designed to simulate real work in public health, the same five generic competencies were assessed simultaneously in each of six stations in 1 h 48 min. This study estimates the examinatio...

Introduction: In recent years, the use of portfolios as learning and assessment tools has become more widespread across the range of health professions. Whilst a growing body of literature has accompanied these trends, there is no clear collated summary of the evidence for the educational effects of the use of portfolios in undergraduate education...

The success and quality of educational provision for children with SEN and/or disabilities is a matter of considerable debate, with wide differences reported by parents. Extant evidence is limited by sampling bias and size, making the true extent of (dis)satisfaction difficult to gauge. This paper reports systematic, comparative evidence from a fac...

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN IN THIS AREA • Several studies have indicated that higher professional education (HPE) is well received by participants and educationalists. • Protected time, adequate funding, reflection and a non-clinical emphasis have all been seen as important. WHAT THIS WORK ADDS • This work is larger in scope and uses four data sources t...

In this article, Ann Lewis, Professor of Education at the University of Birmingham, and Ian Davison, Jean Ellins, Louise Niblett, Sarah Parsons, Christopher Robertson and Jeremy Sharpe from the research team provide a summary of discussions and selected recommendations arising from four linked projects run between 2004 and 2006. The projects were f...

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN IN THIS AREA• General practice (GP) training in the United Kingdom has remained relatively unchanged for over 25 years.• Recent regulatory changes will lead to major changes in all postgraduate medical training programmes in the UK.• There is little research evidence to inform these changes.WHAT THIS WORK ADDS• There is consid...

This study evaluates a pilot careers service for junior doctors provided by a non-medical careers adviser. Evaluation forms and interviews indicate high satisfaction with this service. The junior doctors valued help with CVs and interviews, information regarding career routes and meetings with senior doctors arranged by the adviser. A longitudinal...

With the move towards centralised selection for general practice training in England, there is great interest in the predictive validity of selection systems. However, to our knowledge, no published studies link selection scores to assessments at the end of training. This study examines how well success in assessments at the end of general practice...

In the UK there has been a government drive towards the involvement of lay people in health service decision-making processes. In the West Midlands, lay assessors are present on interview panels for applicants to general practice (GP) training. The impact of their involvement was explored through analysis of scores (207 candidates in March 2002), a...

This commentary identifies four main areas of concern in relation to the current processes for securing ethical and governance approval for educational development and research projects. These areas are: a lack of clarity over what requires approval; a reliance on one procedure for all applications; confusion over the scope of responsibilities with...

This paper reports on part of a project 1 examining how the affordances of interactive whiteboards can facilitate conceptual learning. Here the focus is on the teaching of quadrilateral definitions through the use of Cabri Géomètre. It appears that Year 5 pupils can gain a good grasp of the inclusive nature of quadrilateral definitions with suitabl...