Educator Resource #1: MedEdPortal

We will be posting a series of emails/blog posts to highlight educational resources from the Education SIG throughout the year. Comments are welcome.

Dear Colleagues and Education SIG members

Now that we’ve gotten past the excitement of abstract submissions for next year’s Assembly in New Orleans, Lynn and I would like to engage you in sharing education resources with each other and our broader community. The goal is to promote increased scholarship for and dissemination of palliative care education initiatives. This email will be the first in a series to highlight a specific educator resource. All emails will also be posted on the AAHPM blog to engage a larger group of our colleagues. We encourage you to read about these resources, share your personal experiences with them, ask questions about them, pass them along to colleagues, and contribute to the conversation. Please also contact either of us directly if you would like to share a specific resource or have other ideas for pushing the shared vision of our Education SIG community forward.

Cheers, Everyone,

Laura Morrison, Chair lmorriso@bcm.edu
Lynn O’Neill, Chair-Elect lynn.oneill@duke.edu
Education Special Interest Group, AAHPM

Educator Resource #1: MedEdPortal www.mededportal.org

This major resource focuses on academic medical and dental education and is operated by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Above all, MedEdPortal is a free, peer reviewed publication service. Because MedEdPortal publishes teaching and faculty development materials and assessment tools, it also serves as a place to find such things. In addition to medical and dental education materials, the website indicates they are now accepting interprofessional educational materials submissions that are relevant to medical or dental education. Those from non-medical disciplines can visit and submit materials.

The 3 main reasons to visit MedEdPortal:

1) Finding Education Materials and Resources for Your Program: One can easily search for curricular and assessment materials by numerous categories (medical specialty, ACGME competency, etc.) Searching under palliative care currently yields 27 items with some authors among our SIG community. You must create an account to log in and actually see the posted materials but summaries are accessible to anyone. Citations are also listed. Go see what resources you can find and avoid re-inventing the wheel.

2) Submitting Your Materials: A clear and rigorous submission and peer review process is described and diagramed on the website. This is much like a journal submission as far a formality, including a waiting period for review and feedback from editors with a decision (acceptance, rejection, and acceptance with revision). All materials accepted are published with a citation. Some institutions with clinician-educator pathways are giving these publications weight nearly equal to journal publications. Many aren’t but are still recognizing these as publications on a CV. As far as the timeline, MedEdPortal went through a major reorganization process last year to increase the efficiency of their system. It is new and improved. You should consider a submission, especially if your initiative will not be published in an article. Also, some materials published in articles are still eligible for publication here.

3) Peer Reviewing for Others: For those health professions educators interested in gaining peer review experience in this arena, MedEdPortal is accepting reviewer nominations. The website has very explicit detail about the review process and guidelines listed on the website. The listed contact is: peerreview@aamc.org

Questions:

Does anyone have experience with MedEdPortal? Have you found helpful materials or had success with a submission? Is anyone a peer reviewer?

Colleagues have indicated to me that the submission process requires attention and effort and that the review process is rigorous and highly repected. If one is successful with a publication, it’s a nice accomplishment and contribution. Comments?

I hope you’ll all consider a visit to the website www.mededportal.org and remember this terrific resource. Obviously, we need to encourage them to have a specific category for our subspecialty, and we need to grow the number of palliative care materials available in the repository.

Cheers, Laura