The SHE dialogue, transfer between Directors.
Dear Pim …… Dear Cees…..
Departing Scientific Director Cees van der Vleuten and new Scientific and Research Director of SHE Pim Teunissen share their conversation in which they reflect on past and future times for SHE, the transfer and on current issues in the field, with their opinion, lessons learned, vision, advice and wisdom.
Cees: I am thrilled you are taking over the directorship of SHE (1 September 2020). After being responsible for SHE for 15 years, it is time for new blood.
Pim: Thank you, Cees. I am equally excited about the opportunity to lead SHE into the future. You have done an amazing job building SHE, contributing to evidence-informed health professions education and professionalizing the HPE community worldwide. Looking back, what do you see as the main achievements of the past 15 years?
Cees: Most proud I am of the community that we have built. I am a strong proponent for the use of evidence in education, but the influence of educational researchers on educational practice is limited. I am convinced that educational change should be the responsibility of the people from the health science domain. And here lies our mission. We help to train health professionals in in educational theory and evidence. We have hundreds of alumni from various programs. They will make the difference. And sometimes we help schools to change in defined projects. I guess we have made some impact in the field. Not only scientifically but also practically. Naturally I am also proud of our people. The group is very multidisciplinary. Look at ourselves Pim. I am a psychologist by training, you are an obstetrician and perinatal care specialist. Yet our educational research ambitions are very similar.
Pim: They certainly are. I totally agree with you about the importance of training and educating a diverse group of people and helping them realize what educational improvement actually entails. I also agree that it is vital that healthcare professionals play a central role in improving education in the health science domain. In a way, I am an exponent of your vision on this. Another strength that I see at SHE is that it is a graduate school with three mutually reinforcing components. There is SHE’s Research in Education that is driving high quality research in a variety of issues important to improving education in the health science domain. It is the driving force behind our curiosity and inquisitively critical stance to ‘what is’, ‘what could be’ and ‘what should be’ in education. SHE Educates uses these insights and our School’s creative educational minds to offer short and longer (MHPE) educational experiences for those who want to advance themselves in our field. In addition, SHE Collaborates is making a difference in education worldwide by combining knowledge on education, change management and implementation to offer support on a project basis at institutional levels. These three activities form a powerful mix that ensures that practice can inform research, research can inform theory and theory can inform practice innovations and further research. With this strong foundation, I look to the future with confidence, also in challenging times such as these. Cees, can I ask what you see as an important next development that we should anticipate?
Cees: I have been involved in PhD dissertations from other universities. What strikes me is the enormous differences in requirements. Some require multiple studies that need be (partially) published, others are based on a single study on which a monograph is written. Some require lots of course work, others don’t. Within Europe we have seen a harmonization of the first two cycles in higher education (bachelor and master). I would actually expect a harmonization of the third cycle – the doctorate – as well. Sooner or later this will happen. There is an active working group already (https://orpheus-med.org) and they have published some standards based on consensus meetings. I guess, SHE needs to follow this debate closely.
Pim: That clearly has important implications for how we organize our scientific work, thank you for this suggestion. One of the developments that I foresee, and that I see SHE taking a lead in, is going beyond competency-based education in the health science domain. Competency-based education has led to many positive changes in undergraduate, graduate and continuing health professions’ education. Yet, I sense that we are reaching the limits of its potential. If we continue doing for the next decade what we are doing now, I fear we will see an increasing amount of educational tokenism. Health profession educators and learners, certainly in workplace contexts, that do what our educational systems require them to do but who haven’t incorporated in their everyday practice the habit of ongoing development and improvement. In my opinion, we need to connect quality improvement in healthcare more and more to health professions’ education and make sure they strengthen each other and thereby support both better patient care and continuous learning of (future) healthcare professionals.
Cees, thank you for this conversation, your insights and most importantly for all your work in making education in the health science domain better. The impact of your work cannot be overstated and lives on in all those you have coached, supported and led with your vision.