PJMS- Volume 3 Number 1: January-June 2013

Editorial

1

Research in medical education began just over three 
decades ago with a small group of clinicians and educational 
researchers at the medical school in Buffalo, New York. Since 
then it is rapidly expanding all over the world with India being 
no exception, though we are still in a stage of infancy. 

During the last ten years medical educationists in 
India have slowly made their presence felt and today they are 
there where they should be- in the National Medical education 
policy making forums. 

The goal of medical education has always been 
directed to provide competent physicians who could 
ultimately deliver high quality heath care. To achieve this, the 
system uses diverse and need based processes. 

In spite of the fact that lot of emphasis is being given 
today to health care and improving the quality of life of the 
patient, reports of multiple medical errors, variation in quality 
of care and prescribing habits is also being documented. 
Hence more attention needs to be given to the source of these 
issues which could largely be due to the health providers 
attitude, skill and knowledge. 

Therein lies the huge scope to examine the role of 
medical education in health care outcomes and only 
concerned efforts in structuring good educational research 
protocols could give answers to such questions. Influence of 
medical education on individual knowledge, performance, 
skill or sensitivity to patient care while working in a health care 
system cannot be undermined. 

Quality medical education provides quality 
improvement in patient safety in medical care. Clinical 
outcomes are directly related to quality in medical education 
and hence better health care is the responsibility of the 
medical education community. Moreover, there is a cry to 
improve health care and a call for accountability. Only an 
elaborate medical education research effort will help develop 

Research in Medical Education
Chari Suresh* 

*Chief Editor Panacea, JMS
Professor Biochemistry and
Director Research and Medical 
Education Technology
NKPSIMS and RC, Digdoh Hills, 
Hingna Road,
Nagpur- 440019
sureshchari2@gmail.com

a sound evaluation and outcome measure that will influence 
curriculum changes with the sole purpose of improving health 
care. 

Medical educational research should be directed 
towards creating studies that investigate the effect of medical 
education and has the strength to measure the outcome of 
medical education. 

There are challenges in medical education research 
in India which are unique in nature. Among the fundamental 
difficulties in doing meaningful medical education research 
are anaemic funding, lack of incentive, paucity of readily 
available data set to examine the performance of medical 
graduates at workplace, biases about the subjectivity of the 
research, individual variations, difficulties in measuring the 
outcomes  and the variable support from management. 

Medical universities in India are responsible for 
providing medical education, research and health care 
services. They have to constantly respond to the health needs 
of the society and modify their educational policies. Thus 
proper planning for educational research in line with the 
objectives of the vision and mission of the medical education 
will go long way in improving the overall health care system in 
India. 

Panacea, Journal of Medical sciences publishes 
papers describing original research in all areas of medical field. 
In the last few issues we have been inviting medical 
educational research papers, since research in medical 
education has contributed substantially to the understanding 
of learning process, educational decision making and 
generation of educational policy documents. This section in 
the journal encourages original work in educational research 
in medical science that will foster understanding and 
development of medical education that will ultimately help 
quality health care.

“When medicine can be evidence based why should medical education and educational decision 
making not demand evidence!”