To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler—and less trouble.—Mark Twain
Practicing physicians aspire to be good, whether this attribute is defined with respect to intellectual skills, manual skills, or professional standards. In medicine, it may indeed be nobler to teach others to be good (in any of these senses). However, doing so is arguably far more difficult. Those physicians with expertise may be strikingly inarticulate when trying to convey their reasoning. The complexity of the cognitive tasks required in making a diagnosis or recommending treatment makes determining the most effective formats and settings in which to transmit this knowledge a daunting task. This situation is not made any easier by clinical pressures and general lack of remuneration that often not only fail to provide tangible rewards for teaching but may perversely discourage the best—and most noble—clinicians from participating.
As with the practice of clinical medicine, the best hope for optimizing the quality of medical education is by the conduct of research that meets the highest achievable standards of quality, and by the translation of that research to the educational milieu.
JAMA continues its annual focus on this important topic with the next theme issue on medical education, which will be published September 5, 2007. We invite authors to submit manuscripts related to all aspects of the educational endeavor. We are particularly seeking studies that either incorporate the most relevant educational outcomes (effects on clinical practice and patient care) or address better techniques for their measure.
Previous topics have included the effect of changes in resident work hours on physician health and patient safety, education in evidence-based medicine, diversity in medical education, cross-cultural care, inaccuracy of physician self-assessment, Internet-based education, and funding medical education research. While these remain of interest for this issue, other potential topics include (but are not limited to) the appropriate use of medical literature, successful models for providing incentives to faculty for teaching, professionalism and ethics, and the use of interdisciplinary approaches to learning. Given the role of educator that all physicians play, we are also interested in studies of the effectiveness of training physicians to be teachers, if these studies are conducted with methodological rigor and include important objective outcome measures.
We will consider all original research papers, systematic reviews, and scholarly commentaries addressing medical education, including randomized trials, high-quality observational studies, evidence-based reviews, and presentation of novel methodologies. The effects of medical education at the student, physician, patient, and societal level are all appropriate for consideration. As with all research published in JAMA, we are seeking studies that meet the highest standards for validity and generalizability; preference will be given to studies that include large sample sizes and multiple study sites.
Manuscripts received by March 1, 2007, will have the best chance for consideration for publication in the Medical Education theme issue. All submitted manuscripts will undergo JAMA's usual rigorous editorial evaluation and review. Authors should consult the JAMA Instructions for Authors1 for guidelines on manuscript submission and preparation.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Financial Disclosures: None reported.
Editorials represent the opinions of the authors and JAMA and not those of the American Medical Association.
