Must Reads

What is a ‘Must Read’ for those interested in medical education?

Each month, we identify 3-4 noteworthy articles from the health professions education literature and label them as “must reads.” Selection is based on several criteria including originality and methodological rigor. Our process includes a formal search of the peer-reviewed literature, screening titles and abstracts, full text review, and an editorial meeting to achieve consensus.

Who are we and why are we doing this?

Our reviewers include individuals with expertise in teaching, educational oversight, and research as well as those who are beginning their careers as educational scholars.

The volume of health professions education articles has become overwhelming. In curating some of the best new published papers, we hope to make it easier for all of us to keep abreast of cutting edge educational scholarship and practices.

We’d welcome involvement in the selection process. This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ so reviewers can earn CME credit. They can also contribute to Must Reads research. If you are interested in supporting this work or have perspectives to share, please email Sean Tackett: stacket1@jhmi.edu.

You can also follow @MedEdMustReads on X (aka Twitter), follow the must reads page on LinkedIn, and/or sign up to receive an email each month if you want to be updated on new must reads selections.

(Current Reviewers: Syed Muhammad Ali, Elie Dargham, Suni Ebby, Mohammad Kabakibi, Anisha Kshetrapal, Liju Mathew, Amin Nakhostin-Ansari, Aditi Narsinghpura, Ashley Paul, Julianne Perretta, Katherine Senko, Sean Tackett, Scott Wright, Tony Zhu)

Featured This Month

The Gist

• Interviews of 20 medical students about their responses to failures.
• Presents a “failure lifecycle” model where experiencing sustained distress or personal growth after failure depended on individual mindsets, interpersonal supports, and environmental factors.

Why This is a Must Read

We all feel like we fail sometimes. This article reinforces that how we process failures matters, and with the right elements in place, a sense of failure can lead to personal transformation.

The Gist

• Modified Delphi process with 14 experts to define essential components of an individualized learning plan (ILP).
• The consensus ILP template included sections for considering core values and career aspirations, reflecting on recent feedback, and planning new professional and personal goals.

Why This is a Must Read

ILPs can target educational support and encourage reflective practices that enable lifelong learning. This article can make it easier to implement ILPs in an evidence-informed manner.

The Gist

• Overview of issues to consider when planning clinical learning experiences.
• Discusses how clinical learning occurs, resources needed in the learning environment, quality measurement, and systems-related factors (e.g., partnerships, accreditation).

Why This is a Must Read

The quality of learning in clinical settings determines the quality of clinical practice. This article covers an array of factors to address to ensure robust clinical learning systems are in place to support future clinicians.

Featured

The Gist

• Thematic analysis of 9590 Reddit comments to understand medical student financial hardships.
• Describes the personal and financial costs to students and structural factors that influence them.

Why This is a Must Read

Pursuing a career in medicine takes substantial time and money. This study characterizes the challenges faced by students with limited financial resources and suggests more proactive support is needed.

The Gist

• Analysis of 9 years of data from New Zealand’s Medical School Outcomes Database to determine if clinical rotation length was associated with specialty choice.
• No consistent associations were found; instead work culture was highest ranked.

Why This is a Must Read

Every country seeks to have the right mix of skills in its physician workforce. These data suggest that increasing time in a specialty rotation would not help as much as improving workplace environments.

The Gist

• Commentary reflecting on 20 years of teaching an oath to students at the start of medical school.
• Discusses whether physicians have an ethical obligation to defer to AI “expertise” when it exceeds their own and argues that AI should not replace human judgment.

Why This is a Must Read

Physicians have professed oaths for millennia. This article asks us to consider how traditional expressions of professional values should be interpreted in an AI era.

The Gist

• Commentary that challenges conventional ideas about high-stakes testing.
• Contends that no assessment is strictly formative or summative and that the scope, timeline, and justifications given for assessments need to broaden to align with healthcare needs.

Why This is a Must Read

Healthcare is complex and continuously changing, but high-stakes tests can be rigid, narrow, and potentially counterproductive. This article proposes new ways of thinking about assessment systems so they promote learning throughout education and practice.

The Gist

• Innovation report randomizing internal medicine teams to use a comic book (vs. usual practice) for orientation to bedside patient presentations.
• Attending physicians liked using comics, and learners’ confidence in bedside rounding increased.

Why This is a Must Read

Bedside presentations can benefit patients and clinicians but are not always done. This article shares a creative and feasible way to make bedside rounding more approachable and may inspire similar interventions.

The Gist

• Tips for institutions to implement program level assessment.
• Proposes ways to diagnose institutional readiness, plan implementation, and sustain changes based on Organizational Readiness Theory.

Why This is a Must Read

Educational assessments should be coordinated throughout a program to support feedback and demonstrate learner achievements, but instead assessments are often fragmented. This article suggests strategies to overcome barriers and to make and maintain changes that add value to learning.