Past projects
Can personality influence over career choice and study success?
Dr Gill Clack who was an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Division of Medical Education, has been following a cohort of King’s graduates in relation to her work on career progression. She has extended her work to career choice in relation to measures of psychological type by Myers Briggs Type assessment, having obtained her PhD in this area. Her work has shown the differences in psychological type that exist between physicians and the general UK population. Her work shows the way that knowledge of psychological type can be used to improve interactions with patients and staff.
Different medical school programmes:
The different routes through the programme with six- year EMDP and four-year GPEP (Graduate and Professional Entry) courses are also being explored in a number of studies by Dr Garlick with a research fellow from South Korea, Ji-Young Kim. This prospective study will relate performance on the programme and after graduation to personal and academic characteristics before and after admission.
Student Interviewers
The student involvement in interviewing for the GPEP course has been the subject of another study to be published in Medical Education showing that undergraduate students can provide a useful contribution to interviewing panels.
Stress and Transition to PRHO
John Rees, Professor of Medical Education published a series of articles in Medical Teacher, BMC Medical Education and Journal of Clinical Investigation looking at the transition from undergraduates on King’s programmes to graduates in the preregistration house officer year. The studies looked at the evaluation of competence by graduates and the areas they found stressful. It was found that stress was related to unstable and incomplete clinical teams. Graduates felt vulnerable in areas of therapeutics and pathology. The findings led to the reintroduction of courses in clinical therapeutics and pathology in year 3 and further development of prescribing teaching and assessment in year 5.
Assessing Assessment
The Division has a record of publications in the area of assessment, particularly in relation to the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). The introduction of the Incremental Clinical Examination (ICE) to encourage clinical skills development throughout the year and to reduce the overall examination burden in year 3, concentrating attention on borderline candidates’ is another area being evaluated and presented at AMEE. The first of our Academic F2 doctors, Taryn Youngstein, studied this area together with the robustness of the sign up system for clinical skills.
Presenting Research Externally
The Virtual Campus team produce regular presentations at the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) and the Association for the Study of Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) on the developments of the Virtual Campus and they have regular requests to disseminate their work to other institutions around the world, including links in Sudan, Somaliland and Japan.
The quality group have presented and published work on the links between year 5 skills and Foundation year 1 competencies. Other work has looked at the arrangements for student placements during Year 5 and the qualitative and quantitative evaluation from students and staff. This has been fed back to sub deans and administrators to continue to improve quality of these clinical placements.