Do it together! Conception and long-term results of the trans-institutional Master of Medical Education (MME) program in Germany.

Medical education has the responsibility to react to developments and changing demands in healthcare. This implies the need for experts in the area of medical education as well as nationally coordinated initiatives. An innovative model based on trans-institutional cooperation and nationwide consensus for establishing a master's degree course in Medical Education (MME) and long-term results are presented here to other countries and other programs, facing similar challenges. A MME program with the following goals was implemented at the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, Germany, in 2004: Qualification of leaders in medical faculties, professionalization and improvement of teaching quality, promotion of nationwide and international exchange, and stimulation of research in medical education. Since then, 15 cohorts with a total of 380 participants have started their studies, 179 participants have graduated and 90 publications resulted from the master's theses (as at November 2018). Evaluation and survey data revealed a very high degree of satisfaction among the participants and a lasting development to medical education experts. Our concept shows that the bundling of regional expertise into a clearly structured trans-institutional network can be a driving force for nationwide comprehensive changes, in order to address changing demands in healthcare systems and transfer it into medical education programs.

Is German Medical Education Research on the rise? An analysis of publications from the years 2004 to 2013.

OBJECTIVES: The point of departure for the present work is the observation that, in comparison with Anglo-American countries or the Netherlands, Germany was responsible for only a marginal number of international publications in the field of medical education research before 2004. Recent years, however, have seen an increase in the importance of medical education research in Germany. The objective of this article is to evaluate the extent to which this trend can be substantiated by increased German publishing activity since the year 2004 in international, English-language journals in the subject area of "medical education research". METHODS: In the framework of a literature and content analysis, German-author articles from the years 2004 to 2013 in six international, English-language medical education research journals were evaluated. In order to obtain an overview of German research activity in this area, all project and original works with German first and last authors were identified and subjected to a more in-depth content analysis. RESULTS: In total, 10,055 articles were examined. The evaluation shows that between the years 2004 and 2013 179 articles (of which 145 are project or original works) by German authors were published in the journals examined. Fluctuations over the course of time were evidenced. The project and original works are primarily cross-sectional studies (27.8%) and randomised control studies (25.6%) on the subject of "teaching and learning methods" (43.6%). CONCLUSIONS: In comparison with the years 2004-2008, a significant rise can be seen in the number of publications by German education researchers in international journals since the year 2009.