Fundamentals of Scholarly Peer Review: A Workshop for Health Professions Educators on Practicing Scholarly Citizenship.

Introduction: Education scholarship requires peer reviewers. For novice scholars, reviewing is an important developmental activity that cultivates deeper participation in the scholarship community. Yet getting started with reviewing is challenging for those not involved with the educational scholarship community. Beyond scientific expertise, reviewers must have a mentoring mindset, skills in providing constructive feedback, and knowledge of common ethical challenges associated with producing and evaluating scholarship. Methods: Our workshop introduced novice health professions educators to peer reviewing. It included four stimulus presentations about the peer reviewer's mindset and skills, followed by reinforcement activities. The workshop could be adapted to variously sized groups. An 8:1 ratio of participants to facilitators was ideal for activities. Topics covered included considerations before accepting an invitation, the review process, the good citizen approach to reviewing, and reviewer ethics. The session concluded with suggestions for continued development of peer reviewer competencies. The workshop was evaluated using a custom survey. Results: Throughout 2019 and early 2020, 58 health professions educators and trainees participated in the workshop across varied venues. Evaluations were obtained from 33 participants (57%). Nearly all rated the workshop as high quality and valuable to peer reviewer preparation. Most (26 of 33; 75%) gained confidence about their qualifications to serve as reviewers. Eighty percent (28 of 33) believed they could recognize ethical dilemmas. Discussion: This workshop provided a springboard for peer reviewing health professions education scholarship. Participants generally praised the experience for introducing them to the world of peer review and preparing them for it.

Conversation Starter: Advancing the Theory of Peer-Assisted Learning.

This Conversation Starter article uses four selected abstracts, one each from the four regional Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Educational Affairs (CGEA) 2018 spring meetings, as a springboard for unpacking the definition of peer-assisted learning (PAL). The aim of this article is to prompt deeper reflection on this phenomenon and, in so doing, to foster scholarly program evaluation of this widely adopted instructional approach. This analysis calls for a more nuanced definition of PAL, one that emphasizes process over structure, one that stimulates examination of "doing" PAL and how this affects the personal and professional development of all involved.

Pilot Qualitative Study of Informal Teachers in Interprofessional Collaboration and Practice.

CONTEXT: Nonphysician members of the interprofessional palliative care team often participate in teaching physicians and others in the context of workplace learning due to the interprofessional collaborative nature of the specialty. OBJECTIVES: This pilot study examines the beliefs of the nonphysician members of the interprofessional team about teaching physicians-in-training, the disciplinary training and expertise that informs their teaching, and approaches to teaching in the workplace. METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Initial open coding by two researchers identified the codes, and then the constant comparative method was used to find patterns by axial coding, categories, and themes within the data. RESULTS: Of the 10 health care professionals involved with palliative medical education at one academic medical center, six enrolled in the pilot. Those who participated included chaplains, nurses, a social worker, and a physician assistant. Three major themes were identified from the informal teachers: 1) using professional identity as a foundation for teaching, 2) teaching through experiential learning or debriefing, and 3) teaching to perceived gaps in physician training. CONCLUSION: Nonphysician members of the interprofessional team interacted with physicians-in-training guided by their discipline-based skills and perspectives on patient care. They directed their informal teaching toward perceived educational gaps using reflection and debriefing. Future studies could explore the educational roles of health care professionals across diverse institutions and specialties.

The use of peer optic nerve photographs for teaching direct ophthalmoscopy.

OBJECTIVE: To use a novel teaching exercise to encourage students to practice ophthalmoscopy and to measure the learning effect both subjectively and objectively. DESIGN: Comparative case series. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred thirty-one fourth-year medical students on their 1-week ophthalmology rotations with 89 in the experimental group and 42 in the control group. METHODS: Those in the experimental group had 1 eye dilated and their optic nerve photographed on the first day. The next day, these students received an unlabeled optic nerve photograph belonging to 1 of their peers (typically 8-10 per group) and were given 3 days to identify the student matching the photograph. The students in the control group were simply encouraged to practice ophthalmoscopy on each other without the use of photographs. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Both objective and subjective changes from the beginning to the end of the rotation were measured and compared between the 2 groups. RESULTS: In the 89 students who used peer optic nerve photographs, 75 (84.3%) showed improvement in direct ophthalmoscopy skills over the course of the week. In contrast, only 12 (28.6%) of the 42 control students demonstrated an objective improvement (P<0.001). The subjective confidence levels likewise were more improved in the students who took part in the optic nerve photograph exercise. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the task of matching an unknown optic nerve photograph to the correct eye of a peer leads to increased self-confidence and more proficient use of the direct ophthalmoscope.