Interdisciplinarity in Health Professions Education Research: Myth and Reality

Are we really learning from each other or just talking to ourselves?

You are applying for a grant for your research, do you need to build an interdisciplinary team to be successful in finding funding and answering your research question?

Dr. Mathieu Albert asks us to examine our assumptions about interdisciplinary research during the upcoming Big Ideas Lecture on October 23. Dr. Albert challenges health professionals to look behind the current drive to promote interdisciplinary research to solve complex health care problems and asks his audience to consider hidden assumptions about interdisciplinary in education science. His lecture will draw from his recent and upcoming publications, along with co-authors Farah Friesen, Paula Rowland, and Suzanne Laberge, in the Journal Advances in Health Sciences Education, titled “Problematizing assumptions about interdisciplinary research: implications for health professions education research” and “Interdisciplinarity in medical education research: Myth and reality.”

A Scientist at the Wilson Centre for Research in Education, Dr. Albert uses bibliometric data to quantify the flow of knowledge across disciplines. From this analysis, the authors draw surprising conclusions about the current state of interdisciplinarity in health professions education research, and use this evidence to revisit the assumption that health profession education research is interdisciplinary.

Dr. Albert explains, “As medical education researchers, we think we are interdisciplinary, but we are in only a very narrow way. We need to engage beyond clinical and health services research to learn and benefit from the knowledge developed in disciplines such as education, psychology, and sociology to build our own body of knowledge”.

The Big Ideas Lecture Series is hosted by The Institute for Education Research at UHN (TIER) to provide an opportunity to analyse, critically appraise and design solutions to the pressing issues facing education and health care today. The Big Ideas Lecture takes place October 23 at noon in the Michener Auditorium, 222 St. Patrick St., Toronto. For more information, follow the link to TIER’s Big Ideas Lecture Series.