Joint Master of Health Professions Education

This Unit enables the fellows to master the different leadership competencies and also provides them with a broad understanding of management principles. Topics included are:

• Leadership styles and competencies.
• Building and managing effective teams.
• Planning.
• Assessing, quantifying and mitigating risks.
• Conflict resolution.
• Crisis management.
• Change management.

 Program evaluation is essential for the management of any program, whether for-profit or for non-profit. Evaluation can help managers and workers/staff understand the operability of their organization and trace the connecting lines between the goals, means and ends. This helps make the appropriate decisions whether it is extension, development, modification or change. Topics included are:

• Definition, planning, and setting evaluation standards.
• Goals, activities, and merits.
• Threats to validity and sampling.
• Instruments and goals for data collection.
• Instrument validation.
• Piloting, coding, and report writing.

This Unit addresses quality in Higher Education in general as well as accreditation in Health Professions Education in special. This unit provides an insight into the main aspects of Quality in Higher Education, instruments and procedures, the WFME global standards for accreditation in Health Professions Education and the accreditation process in HPE in the EMR and to study and practice the role of the Internal Audit and Peer Reviewer in this process. Topics included are:

• Defining “Quality” and describing its different approaches.
• The advantages and disadvantages of applying each of those approaches in higher education.
• Judging the appropriateness of application of the recently developed models for quality management in higher education in his/her national context.
• Summarizing the main uses of the WFME International Global Standards in HPE.
• Identifying the main requirements for accreditation of a HPEI by a national accrediting body.
• Planning and Conducting, as a member amongst an affiliated team, the school self-study and developing its document including an appropriate SWOT analysis.
• How to act as a peer-reviewer for the self-studies of other institutions.
• How to practice the role of an internal audit.

 In this Unit, students’ assessment will be the topic. The different methods of assessing knowledge, skills, and attitude will be learned through this unit. Topics included are:

• Learning Outcomes.
• Cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domain taxonomies.
• Validity and reliability.
• Test forms.
• Assembling, administering, and appraising the test.
• Interpreting, grading, marking, and reporting.

CBE is an approach to health professions education in which students, from the early phases of their training, are confronted with the health problems of the communities they are supposed to serve in the future. It is assumed that through early and extensive contacts with the community, students may become better prepared to deal with those problems in the future. As it turns out, the majority of community-oriented educational institutions use PBL and/or the problem-solving process in their community-based learning experiences. This brings together the different strands of perceived needs for change in health professions education mentioned. Topics included are:

• Why Community-Based Education (CBE)?
• Concepts and characteristics of CBE.
• The concept and rational of primary health care (PHC).
• Community participation.
• Development of CBE curriculum.
• Students’ assessment in CBE.
• Historical background of PBL.
• Advantages and disadvantages of PBL.
• Process and steps of problem solving.
• Prioritization of the community health problems.
• Formulation and design of educational health problems for PBL curriculum.

 In this Unit, the focus will be on understanding the process of students’ learning, learning theories, learning styles, educational psychology, and the learning environments. Topics included are:

• Student motivation.
• Professional identity.
• Knowledge and learning.
• Skills acquisition.
• Psychological theories and teaching.
• Characteristics of effective and efficient learning in higher education.
• Analysis of skills training.
• Anatomy of apprenticeship.
• Motivational and cognitive processes influencing tutorial groups.

 In this Unit, principles of curriculum development, curriculum models, curriculum mapping, and curriculum designs will be learned. Topics included are:

• Curriculum analysis.
• Requirements of the curriculum: physical, organizational, and political-legal.
• Building a framework; the blueprint.
• Curriculum change.
• Implementation and evaluation.

 In this Unit, acquisition, training, and assessment of professional skills will be the focus. Adjusting own professional skills and feedback training will be stressed on. Topics included are:

• Acquisition and training.
• Tailoring a teaching programme with complex skills.
• Constructing learning materials.
• Adjusting self-professional skills.
• Feedback training.

 On successful completion of this unit, learners are expected to achieve the following learning outcomes in relation to health professions education:

• Undertake literature review around a research topic and critique published literature
• Write an academic medical education text utilizing the critical writing skills
• Formulate relevant research questions and testable hypotheses
• Select appropriate research designs and sampling strategies
• Prepare a research proposal in a health professions education topic
• Explain the concepts of validity and reliability
• Construct a plan for testing the psychometric properties of questionnaires
• Interpret the output of common quantitative statistical data analysis, especially multiple regression and factor analysis
• Identify the principles of research ethics