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Medical education research: aligning design and research goals

Jennifer A Cleland, Steven J Durning and Erik Driessen
Med J Aust 2018; 208 (11): . || doi: 10.5694/mja17.00941
Published online: 18 June 2018

Given that the training of doctors started some 2000 years ago, one might think that everything that needs to be known about medical education is long known. Not so. Times change and so do practice, society, health care systems and patient expectations. There are also shifts in how we deliver education, and in training linked to changing health care practices and systems (eg, limits on hours of training).1 Moreover, our knowledge of what constitutes good clinical practice is constantly evolving.2


  • 1 Centre for Healthcare Education Research and Innovation, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
  • 2 Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, USA
  • 3 Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands


Correspondence: jen.cleland@abdn.ac.uk

Competing interests:

No relevant disclosures.

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