Richard B Hays

James Cook University | JCU · School of Medicine and Dentistry

Background Medical education offers the foundational base for future healthcare professionals, with basic sciences playing a pivotal role in providing essential knowledge and skills for clinical practice. However, the long-term retention and application of this knowledge in clinical practice remain a significant challenge. This systematic review sy...

Background Basic sciences are crucial for clinical medicine, yet studies focusing on their perceived utility among general practitioners (GPs) are sparse. Considering the broad scope of GPs’ practice, an in-depth understanding of basic sciences is fundamental for making informed clinical decisions. This study evaluated GP registrars’ retention and...

Curriculum change is relatively frequent in health professional education. Formal, planned curriculum review must be conducted periodically to incorporate new knowledge and skills, changing teaching and learning methods or changing roles and expectations of graduates. Unplanned curriculum evolution arguably happens continually, usually taking the f...

Background Clinical assessors in pre-registration examinations have been shown to make decisions about student performance by drawing on two overlapping, yet slightly different perspectives: achieving academic learning outcomes, and contributing to clinical workplace function. The implication for senior medical students is that they should be aware...

Assessment of senior medical students is usually calibrated at the level of achieving expected learning outcomes for graduation. Recent research reveals that clinical assessors often balance two slightly different perspectives on this benchmark. The first is the formal learning outcomes at graduation, ideally as part of a systematic, program-wide a...

Introduction Rural placements are an important component of rural medical education programs seeking to develop rural practice pathways for medical students. These placements are usually domestic, but James Cook University in Australia developed an international rural placement program in the first half of the medical course that was funded through...

Decision-making in clinical assessment, such as exit-level medical school Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), is complex. This study utilized an empirical phenomenological qualitative approach with thematic analysis to explore OSCE assessors' perceptions of the concept of a “prototypical intern” expressed during focus group discussi...

Introduction: Emergency department (ED) utilisation continues to increase, particularly for primary care presentations that do not require high level ED services. The reasons for this are complex, and research has focused on patient perspectives in choosing where to seek care rather than those of ED and general practitioner (GP) providers. This st...

This AMEE guide provides a robust framework and practical strategies for health professions educators to enhance their writing skills and engage in successful scholarship within a collaborative writing team. Whether scholarly output involves peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, blogs and online posts, online educational resources, collaborative w...

MedEdPublish has come a long way since it was launched in 2016 by AMEE as an independent academic e-journal that supports scholarship in health professions education. Beginning as a relatively small, in-house publication on a web platform adapted for the purpose, we invited members of our community of practice to submit articles on any topic in hea...

Optimize your assessment processes through Quality Assurance. This is a ground-breaking guide to ensuring quality assurance in the movement toward competency-based medical education With the increasing globalization of medical education comes the need for mutual recognition of quality and standards. Understanding Assessment in Medical Education thr...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many challenges to medical education, necessitating a rapid transition to digital delivery. The widespread move to online exams has introduced novel risks, including the risk of catastrophic IT failure. These are not ‘black swan’ events – something so unexpected and devastating that we could not anticipate them and...

Objective To estimate the number of general practice-appropriate attendances in a remote emergency department and explore the reasons for patients’ choice of service. Design A four-step case study approach was adopted, focusing on hospital emergency department (ED) attendances that were potentially manageable in general practice. Setting A large,...

Introduction Psychology workforce shortages in geographically rural or remote contexts have highlighted the need to understand the supervisory experiences of psychologists practising in these locations, and the models of supervision employed to support their practice and improve client safety. Objective To review the models of remote professional...

Health professions education is that part of the education system which applies educational philosophy, theory, principles and practice in a complex relationship with busy clinical services, where education is not the primary role. While the goals are clear—to produce the health workforce that society needs to improve health outcomes—both education...

Scholarship in Health Professions Education is not just original research, it also includes study of educational processes, and application of new knowledge to practice. The pathways to successful scholarship are not always clear to novice educators. In this article, we describe strategies to establish a Community of Scholars (CoS), where more expe...

Background Conversations about educational challenges and potential solutions among a globally and culturally diverse group of health professions’ educators can facilitate identity formation, mentoring relationships and professional network building. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even more important to co-create and disseminate knowledge, speci...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. What are health professions educators doing during the COVID-19 pandemic? A search of articles in MedEdPublish on the topics of COVID-19 revealed 39 articles published in the first 3 months of the pandemic. Topics included curriculum adaptation, guidelines for using technology, asses...

Background: Substantial government funding has been invested to support the training of General Practitioners (GPs) in Australia to serve rural communities. However, there is little data on the impact of this expanded training on smaller communities, particularly for smaller rural and more remote communities. Improved understanding of the impact o...

Background Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) are commonly used to assess the clinical skills of health professional students. Examiner judgement is one acknowledged source of variation in candidate marks. This paper reports an exploration of examiner decision‐making to better characterise the cognitive processes and workload associa...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Applying for a medical school place is a challenging step that can have long term consequences. Competition is strong, both for applicants to gain a place and for medical schools to recruit the ‘best’ applicants. Strategies to increase candidate success flourish, but many are unprove...

What are health professions educators doing during the COVID-19 pandemic? A search of articles in MedEdPublish on the topics of COVID-19 revealed 39 articles published in the first 3 months of the pandemic. Topics included curriculum adaptation, guidelines for using technology, assessment adaptation, impact on students, faculty and career developme...

Australia is one of many countries to rely on International Medical Graduates (IMGs) to fill general practitioner (GP) positions throughout its regional, rural, and remote (RRR) communities. Current government initiatives requiring IMGs to work for specified periods in RRR areas offer only short-term solutions. The need to improve the long-term ret...

Objective Community engagement activities are the entry point to a “pipeline” of activity aimed at supporting under‐represented students and nurturing their interest in medical careers following graduation. This review aimed to describe the range of activities medical schools undertake to encourage and support rural students or other targeted under...

Background: The diverse rural medical education initiatives that have been developed in Australia to address the medical workforce maldistribution have been less successful in many smaller and remote communities. This study explored the factors that attract and retain GP registrars and supervisors and the impact that localised training (i.e., rura...

Mentors play a critical role in the development of professionals, influencing their job satisfaction, career aspirations and evolving professional identity. A variety of mentoring models exist, each with distinct benefits and challenges. Speed mentoring, based on the concept of speed dating, provides mentees with opportunities to meet multiple ment...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Medical education publishing is growing rapidly, with both increasing demand for publication space and increasing space availability. The increasing speed of publication, variable degrees of manuscript checking and increasing accessibility pose some challenges to compliance with ethi...

Background There has been a trend globally to move from a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) to a Doctor of Medicine (MD) for primary medical education. This shift has seen many Australian universities change to an MD, mostly from graduate entry programs. This paper describes the novel and unique 3+2 model from one Australian univer...

Medical programs are under pressure to maintain currency with scientific and technical advances, as well as prepare graduates for clinical work and a wide range of postgraduate careers. The value of the basic sciences in primary medical education was assessed by exploring the perceived clinical relevance and test performance trends among medical st...

Introduction: Various pressures exist for curricular change, including economic forces, burgeoning knowledge, broadening learning outcomes, and improving quality and outcomes of learning experiences. In an Australian 5-year undergraduate medical course, staff were asked to reduce teaching hours by 20% to alleviate perceived overcrowded preclinical...

Challenges in assessment implementation include assessment blueprinting, accuracy and timeliness of result processing, item analysis and personalised feedback. These challenges were addressed by an online assessment system (OAS) that translates the educational framework of outcome-based education (OBE) into an integrated platform applicable across...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. There has been a substantial increase in the number of medical and health professional education manuscripts being submitted to an increasing number of journals in this field. More reviews and more reviewers are needed to facilitate discussion of both relevance and quality of those m...

Many new medical programs have been established during the last 20 years, and this trend seems set to continue as the health care needs of the world’s populations become more complex and demand increases for more physicians to provide the necessary health care. In this paper, we address how best to establish a new medical school, based on our exper...

Objective To identify under‐represented groups in a medical school intake. Design Descriptive analysis of student demographic characteristics. Setting One state‐wide medical school. Participants All students enrolled between 2010 and 2016. Main outcome measure(s) Proportion of students from regional and rural areas, state versus independent sch...

Objective: To borrow a public health concept, there has been a global outbreak, perhaps a pandemic, of new medical schools during the last 20 years, resulting in a diverse range of programs in many different contexts. The question posed was: how should the task of establishing a new medical program be approached in 2018? Methods: Based on involveme...

Many rural and remote communities are struggling to attract and retain GPs while experiencing poorer population health outcomes and burden of disease. Therefore, the provision of a reliable rural GP workforce is vital. Registered Training Organisations provide high quality training experiences for GP registrars. A collaborative project between JCU...

ABSTRACT Introduction: In 2010, the Ottawa Conference produced a set of consensus criteria for good assessment. These were well received and since then the working group monitored their use. As part of the 2010 report, it was recommended that consideration be given in the future to preparing similar criteria for systems of assessment. Recent develo...

Background: Australia continues to develop as a multicultural nation, with a population that is ageing and developing complex health needs. The world around us is changing, and the pace of change is increasing. These contextual changes pose challenges for general practice training. Objective: This paper explores the potential impact of these cha...

Background: Medical workforce problems still dominate headlines despite considerable investment in education, training and other initiatives. There is little consensus about what Australia's general practice workforce should look like or what training outcomes should be reported. Objective: The aim of this paper was to explore a number of issues...

AMEE MedEdPublish was launched two years ago as a new outlet for scholarship in medical education (Hays, 2016). The on-line journal format broke new ground in a context where the proportion of papers submitted to medical education journals achieving publication was falling sharply. All academic journals face challenges obtaining sufficient reviews...

Background: James Cook University (JCU) enrolled its first cohort of 64 in 2000 into a 6-year undergraduate medical program aimed at producing graduates capable of meeting the needs of North Queensland, Australia, with a focus on rural, remote, Indigenous and tropical health. The school’s 1465 graduates over 13 cohorts who have a pattern of practic...

Undergraduate medical education has expanded substantially in recent years, through both establishing new programs and increasing student numbers in existing programs. This expansion has placed pressure on the capacity for training students in clinical placements, raising concerns about the risk of dilution of experience, and reducing work readines...

Context: Case study research (CSR) is a research approach that guides holistic investigation of a real phenomenon. This approach may be useful in medical education to provide critical analyses of teaching and learning, and to reveal the underlying elements of leadership and innovation. There are variations in the definition, design and choice of m...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. The number of medical school places appears to be increasing faster than population growth in many parts of the world, with perhaps two main drivers. The first is the increasing population, in particular those with who are older and with chronic, complex health conditions. The second...

Introduction: Much of regional Australia continues to face challenges in recruitment and retention of medical practitioners, despite the apparently successful rural medical education initiatives funded by the Commonwealth Government. International fee-paying (IFP) medical students are a significant component of Australian medical education, contri...

Context: In 1988, the World Federation of Medical Education called for reform in medical education, publishing 12 recommendations. The sixth recommendation of this Edinburgh Declaration was to 'complement instruction about the management of patients with increased emphasis on promotion of health and prevention of disease'. Thirty years on, this pa...

Background: Tasmania established its medical programme in 1965 to produce graduates to address medical workforce recruitment challenges. Many Tasmanian graduates work in Tasmania, but workforce problems continue. This paper reports the workforce outcomes of the first 42 graduating cohorts. Methods: A database for all University of Tasmania medic...

CC made substantial contribution to the conception and design of the work; the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data for the work; drafting and revising the work and final approval of the version to be published; and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of a...

Rural medical educators have devised strategies based on research evidence to help shape a medical workforce that will choose to serve in rural and other under-served communities, where the health care needs are often high. Based on evidence that students from rural communities are more likely to work later in rural practice, many medical programme...

Background In Australia, medical students usually undertake a series of 6-8 weeks long clinical specialty placements, and mainly in urban teaching hospitals. As part of a strategy to increase interest in rural careers, students at some medical schools may instead choose longer, more generalist clinical placements through either rural medical school...

A curriculum is an important component of a medical program because it is the source of information that learners, teachers and external stakeholders use to understand what learners will experience on their journey to recognition as a medical graduate. While many focus on and debate the content of a medical curriculum, with some suggestions that th...

Medical migration appears to be an increasing global phenomenon, with complex contributing factors. Although it is acknowledged that such movements are inevitable, given the current globalized economy, the movement of health professionals from their country of training raises questions about equity of access and quality of care. Concerns arise if m...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Not needed for editorial

A curriculum is an important component of a medical program because it is the source of information that learners, teachers and external stakeholders use to understand what learners will experience on their journey to recognition as a medical graduate. While many focus on and debate the content of a medical curriculum, with some suggestions that th...

Background: In the 11 years since its development at McMaster University Medical School, the multiple mini-interview (MMI) has become a popular selection tool. We aimed to systematically explore, analyze and synthesize the evidence regarding MMIs for selection to undergraduate health programs. Methods: The review protocol was peer-reviewed and p...

Introduction: One approach to facilitating student interactions with patient pathways at Keele University School of Medicine, England, is the placement of medical students for 25% of their clinical placement time in general practices. The largest component is a 15-week 'student attachment' in primary care during the final year, which required the...

I would like to thank the authors of the two letters that comment on the paper on standard setting. 1 The authors of the fi rst letter have correctly identifi ed that the wrong brief description of borderline regression has been provided in both the text and a table. 2 The borderline group method was removed from an earlier version of the paper to...

Background: General practice in Australia and internationally has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past half century in terms of recognition, academic status, organisation and funding. Training pathways have also evolved in response to this changing environment. Objectives: This paper compares some of the features of Australian and i...

Context: Maintaining an adequate health workforce in rural and remote Australia is challenging. The Australian Government has addressed this challenge by encouraging the admission of rural background students and supporting the growth of regionally based academic health faculties and clinical schools. Issue: It is imperative to assess the relevance...

Editors' note: The assessment of learners is an important part of any educational process: how are judgments made about the required standard an individual has to achieve to progress to the next level of education or training? Arbitrary pass marks such as 50 per cent are no longer defensible in health professional education. In this toolbox article...

To explore the future career preferences of Commonwealth-supported place (CSP) and full-fee paying (FFP) medical students in Australia. Data from the Medical Schools Outcomes Database and Longitudinal Tracking (MSOD) Project exit questionnaire for CSP and FFP students who graduated between 2008 and 2011 were analysed using logistic regression. The...

Substantial variation exists between schools and countries as regards the role of ethics, law and professionalism in medical curricula. Greater consistency of approach is needed between schools and countries to better safeguard standards of professional practice. From an international perspective these subjects are the focus of increasing attention...

see front matter © 2014 Facultad de Medicina Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Arte, diseño, composición tipográfica y proceso fotomecánico por Elsevier México. Todos los derechos reservados. Reception June 16 th , 2014; acceptance august 11 th , 2014 Abstract Substantial variation exists between schools and countries as regards the role of...

Abstract In an era of increasing scrutiny of the performance of graduates in the workplace, there can be frustrations when decisions about learners with borderline or poor performance in formal assessments are over-turned in appeal processes. This article addresses the approach to reducing the uncertainty about assessment decisions and surviving ap...

Objective To describe factors predicting James Cook University (JCU) medical graduates having a rural practice location at postgraduate year (PGY) 5.ParticipantsJCU MBBS graduates who had completed their PGY 5 in Australia (n = 260).DesignMultiple logistic regression analysis involving graduates' application data (age, gender, location of hometown,...

Background: The World Federation of Medical Education has released a revised version of their Basic Medical Education Standards. This paper compares the original and revised versions following an external review of a medical school based on the original version, and indicates potential implications of the changes for making judgements about the qu...

Background: Most medical schools require formal competence assessment of students immediately prior to graduation, but variation exists in the approach to endpoint assessments. This article reports perceptions of senior students and graduates from a school with a six-year program which has introduced final year workplace immersion placements follo...

The regionally-based James Cook University (JCU) School of Medicine aims to meet its mission to address the health needs of the region by combining selection and curriculum strategies shown to increase rural career recruitment outcomes. The School has graduated 536 students in its first seven cohorts from 2005 to 2011. This paper presents the early...

This book covers several topics relevant to being a teacher in general medical practice in the community, including: what can be learned in ambulatory settings; teaching skills, assessment skills; evaluation of teaching and career development.

This chapter describes the successful establishment of the James Cook University School of Medicine, an example of rural/regional medical education initiative that is making a difference to workforce and health care service provision.

Background: Most medical schools require formal competence assessment of students immediately prior to graduation, but variation exists in the approach to endpoint assessments. This article reports perceptions of senior students and graduates from a school with a six-year program which has introduced final year workplace immersion placements follow...

Editors' note: The assessment of learners is an important part of any educational process: how are judgments made about the required standard an individual has to achieve to progress to the next level of education or training? Arbitrary pass marks such as 50 per cent are no longer defensible in health professional education. In this toolbox article...

This chapter provides a current overview of how to assess professionalism in medical students, junior doctors and experienced clinicians, focusing on capturing observation and management of behaviours in professional practice.

Doctors in training are exposed to pressures and distractions to which they do not always respond appropriately, and individuals and institutions can struggle to deal effectively with difficulties when they arise. This book exposes the myths surrounding medical professionalism and strips it of pretensions or exclusivity, making a complex subject ac...

Since 1999 the number of medical school places in Australia has increased substantially in response to workforce shortages, with some of the increased capacity in regional and rural communities. The James Cook University (JCU) School of Medicine, the first of a number of new medical schools, was established with a mission to address the health need...