1Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College and Hospital, Pondicherry, India
2Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
*Corresponding author email id: amolrdongre@gmail.com
Online published on 9 April, 2019.
The current situation of medical education research in India with reference to its characteristics is not known. This exploration has implications to set the directions for the future educational research and faculty development programs in India.
Asystematic review of original articles on educational research published from India in last 10 years was done. Eighty-eight articles were retrieved from PubMed by a search strategy using keywords. Out of 88 articles, 17 articles based on author's view points or reviews were excluded and 71 articles based on primary data were subjected to explore the year of publication, target group, study design, focus, scholarships or support and its publication outlets. The authors used a pre-designed checklist to review the retrieved full text of each article.
About 12 (14.1%) articles were surveys among students on various topics, followed by 10 (16.3%) articles on small group teaching, 8 (11.3%) on innovations in large group teaching, 8 (11.3%) on faculty development, 6 (8.5%) on undergraduate research and 5 (7%) on community-based teaching. Out of 71 articles, 57 (80.3%) articles were focused on undergraduate teaching, 10 (14.1%) articles were on faculty development, 3 (4.2%) articles were on post-graduate teaching and 1 article on medical internship. Most, 46 (64.7%) articles were evaluation of innovations of Kirkpatrick level-1 and remaining 25 (35.3%) articles were survey or research. Majority, 53 (74.6%) articles used quantitative methods. Thirteen (18.3%) articles used Mixed-Methods (14.3%) and only 5 (7%) articles used qualitative methods.
Most of the published researches is on innovation in teaching methods and surveys. The future educational research in India should focus on operational problems in improving student assessment and mainstreaming competency-based curriculum. Studies on program evaluation should shift its focus from learners’ satisfaction (Kirkpatrick level-1) to change in organizational practices and its subsequent effect on patient outcomes (Kirkpatrick level-2, 3 and 4). Research is required to improve post-graduate training and assessment, medical internship and develop student support system.
Medical education, Student, Research, India
