Number 4: Share broadly
Scholarship activities of both academic and community-based CEs can target many audiences, including medical students, residents, and fellows; faculty; other health professions; or even patients and the community. Knowing who will be the recipients or end-users can help to identify which types of projects may be most rewarding and make the greatest impact. Consider sharing curricula, evaluation tools, and other educational products with colleagues at other institutions who ask for them. Request acknowledgment for the development of the materials and ask for written feedback on how these products are being used and what impact they have had on learners.
One education model used to assess the impact and target of education interventions is known as Kirkpatrick’s9 hierarchy, which traditionally included the following four levels: reaction (level 1), learning (level 2), behavior (level 3), and results (level 4). The model has been adapted by the British Medical Journal’s Best Evidence in Medical Education collaboration to medical education with the following modifications in levels as follows.9,10 Level 1: participation: focused on learners’ views of the learning experience including content, presentation, and teaching methods. Level 2a: modification of attitudes/perceptions: focused on changes in attitudes or perceptions between participant groups toward the intervention. Level 2b: modification of knowledge/skills: for knowledge, focused on the acquisition of concepts, procedures, and principles; for skills, focused on the acquisition of problem solving, psychomotor, and social skills. Level 3: behavioral change: focused on the transfer of learning to the workplace or willingness of learners to apply new knowledge and skills. Level 4a: change in organizational practice: focused on wider changes in the organization or delivery of care attributable to an educational program. Level 4b: focused on improvements in the health and well-being of patients as a direct result of an education initiative.
Similar to more traditional clinical research, education research needs to be performed in a scholarly fashion and shared with a wider audience. In addition to submitting research to gastroenterology journals (e.g., Gastroenterology’s Mentoring, Education, and Training Corner), education research can be submitted to education journals such as the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Academic Medicine, the Association for the Study of Medical Education’s Medical Education, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s Journal of Graduate Medical Education, or the European Association for Medical Education in Europe’s Medical Teacher; online education warehouses such as MedEdPORTAL (www.mededportal.org) or MERLOT (www.merlot.org); and national conferences as workshops. Also, one should keep in mind that opportunities arise on a regular basis to share educational videos or images in forums such as the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy’s video journal VideoGIE, The American Journal of Gastroenterology’s video of the month, and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology’s Images of the Month.
