Reminders from the IAMSE Publications Committee

I am writing to remind you to regularly access JIAMSE. It contains a wealth of information that can spark our creative juices and make us all better educators. Don’t forget to consider the journal when preparing articles for publication. JIAMSE needs increased visibility through citation of articles published in the journal so please consider this also when preparing articles about your education research.

The timing of publication types will be changed beginning with the upcoming issues. The journal will now be published four times per year and all publication types accepted may be found in each issue of the journal. You might want to review the various types of publications and consider submitting something for publication. One supplement will be published per year carrying the peer reviewed abstracts presented at the annual meeting. The supplement with the abstracts from the Salt Lake City meeting will be published shortly. In advance of that, I remind you of a couple of articles in the most recent issue of JIAMSE.

Among the several Innovations in Medical Education in the most recent supplement, Vol. 18 1S (the last supplement of this type), is the following – Use of Portfolios in a First Year Medical School Course by Norma Saks and Carol Terregino of The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. They describe a recently implemented requirement for first year students to begin a portfolio of reflections. The portfolio requirement is tied to their Patient Centered Medicine course. Students are required to reflect on specific experiences throughout the year beginning with reflections about health care prior to even beginning medical school. Facilitators of small groups comment on each student’s entries. As a required part of the course, students must make at least one entry per month and are ultimately graded on whether they have completed the minimum requirement and whether their entries reflect thought and thorough reflection. Self reflection is an important skill for all physicians and portfolios are widely regarded as a way to begin the process. As we are exploring how to incorporate a long-term longitudinal portfolio requirement at my school, I found this approach very useful to think about.

In the same issue, a Monograph appears related in many ways to the Innovation described above. In this article, An Overview on Educating Future Physicians Concerning Professionalism, Lorraine Basnight and colleagues from East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine describe the work of a task force at their school charged with reviewing and making recommendations about the teaching and assessment of professionalism at their school. The article reviews much of the pertinent literature on defining professionalism and how it is taught and assessed. The review of the definition and characteristics of professionalism published by various groups over the past few years and the incorporation of the requirement to demonstrate the teaching and assessment of professionalism in LCME accreditation guidelines was very useful. Overall, the monograph nicely summarized current thinking about the topic and would allow anyone to get themselves up to date about thinking in this arena.

Don’t forget – you can access these and other articles at www.jiamse.org. If you have trouble accessing the current issue and your IAMSE membership is up to date, contact Julie Hewett for access information.

Happy reading!

Dani L. McBeth, Ph.D.

Publications Committee Chair