Evidence-Based Education in the Health Professions: Promoting Best Practice in the Learning and Teaching of Students

Teaching future health professionals involves more than choosing a course format or adopting a popular classroom technique. Evidence-Based Education in the Health Professions examines how educators can find, appraise, and apply research to decisions about learning and teaching—while recognizing that evidence must be judged in context.

Edited by Ted Brown and Brett Williams, this multi-contributor volume brings educational principles together with the particular demands of healthcare training. Its scope reaches from broad questions about evidence and curriculum to approaches used across specific health disciplines.

From educational evidence to considered practice

The opening section sets out the context for evidence-based education in the health professions. It considers factors that shape education, how evidence can be located, and ways educators can generate and assess knowledge about teaching and learning. The emphasis is not simply on gathering research, but on considering its relevance before applying it.

Explore the ideas behind effective teaching

Chapters address student-centred learning, professionalism, curriculum development, accreditation, professional competencies, threshold concepts, transformative learning, assessment, and modes of pedagogy. Together, these subjects offer readers a broad view of the decisions involved in designing and maintaining health-professions education.

A range of approaches, considered through evidence

The book also examines specific teaching and learning approaches, including e-learning and educational technology, e-portfolios, simulation, peer-assisted learning, interprofessional education, problem-based and case-based learning, team-based learning, didactic teaching, just-in-time teaching, and service-learning. The range makes it possible to consider these methods as part of a wider educational picture rather than in isolation.

Applications across the health professions

The final section turns to evidence-based education in occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech-language pathology and audiology, nursing and midwifery, paramedics, radiography, pharmacy, and nutrition and dietetics. This discipline-specific coverage helps connect shared educational questions with the different professional settings in which students learn.

For educators, researchers, and students

This volume will interest health-professions educators, clinical and practice education supervisors, educational researchers, and students seeking a grounded overview of teaching and learning across healthcare disciplines. Its multidisciplinary perspective is especially useful for readers comparing approaches and considering how evidence can inform educational choices in their own settings.