TY - JOUR
T1 - Expectations for PhDs in health professions education
T2 - an international EPA-framed, modified Delphi study
AU - Gandomkar, Roghayeh
AU - Zaeri, Reza
AU - ten Cate, Olle
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank the experts who were willing to serve on the Delphi Panel in all three rounds, which was a significant effort: Harm Peters, Maria Blanco, Fei Chen, Tim Fawns, Larry Gruppen, Sigrid Harendza, Kathryn Huggett, Subha Ramani, Susan van Schalkwyk, Lambert Schuwirth, Alan Schwartz, John Shatzer, Cayla Teal, Marieke van der Schaaf, Cees van der Vleuten
Funding Information:
This work was funded by the National Agency for Strategic Research in Medical Education. Tehran. Iran. under Grant number 981116.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Health professions education (HPE) has matured into field of study that employs and produces specialized educational scholars. Many academic institutions employ such scholars to support development and innovation in education. Simultaneously, the possibilities to obtain a PhD degree in HPE are expanding. Clarity in the expectations that such a degree brings along can be useful for scholars, employers and institutions. Anticipating that the views of what a PhD in HPE is or should be can vary between institutions, cultures and countries, we conducted an international Delphi study to identify EPAs for HPE PhDs. We used a framework of 24 EPAs resulted from a national consensus study in Iran as input to seek more generalized validity and a wider consensus of reasonably suitable activities. A three-round modified Delphi study was conducted with participation of 15 international experts. Final framework consisted of 17 relevant EPAs with a justification, specifications and limitations, and risks in case of failure per EPA (all had overall CVI > 0.8 for adequacy of description). Eleven EPAs were considered by the majority to be core to PhD training, 16 to be desirable for HPE PhDs as a capability to carry out without supervision, but the majority would trust current HPE PhDs to carry out only 5 of the 17 without supervision. The EPAs identified in this study arguably reflect the expectations of educators with a PhD degree in HPE. The framework has the potential to advance HPE training across countries and to inform personal development and employment decisions.
AB - Health professions education (HPE) has matured into field of study that employs and produces specialized educational scholars. Many academic institutions employ such scholars to support development and innovation in education. Simultaneously, the possibilities to obtain a PhD degree in HPE are expanding. Clarity in the expectations that such a degree brings along can be useful for scholars, employers and institutions. Anticipating that the views of what a PhD in HPE is or should be can vary between institutions, cultures and countries, we conducted an international Delphi study to identify EPAs for HPE PhDs. We used a framework of 24 EPAs resulted from a national consensus study in Iran as input to seek more generalized validity and a wider consensus of reasonably suitable activities. A three-round modified Delphi study was conducted with participation of 15 international experts. Final framework consisted of 17 relevant EPAs with a justification, specifications and limitations, and risks in case of failure per EPA (all had overall CVI > 0.8 for adequacy of description). Eleven EPAs were considered by the majority to be core to PhD training, 16 to be desirable for HPE PhDs as a capability to carry out without supervision, but the majority would trust current HPE PhDs to carry out only 5 of the 17 without supervision. The EPAs identified in this study arguably reflect the expectations of educators with a PhD degree in HPE. The framework has the potential to advance HPE training across countries and to inform personal development and employment decisions.
KW - Delphi study
KW - Entrustable professional activities
KW - Health profession education
KW - PhD
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85134329172&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10459-022-10136-4
DO - 10.1007/s10459-022-10136-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85134329172
SN - 1382-4996
VL - 27
SP - 1443
EP - 1456
JO - Advances in Health Sciences Education
JF - Advances in Health Sciences Education
IS - 5
ER -