Medical Education Unit Research

Medical Education Unit research projects

The Medical Education Unit is engaged in a wide variety of research projects across the medical education spectrum.

We collaborate with other departments and research centres in UWS as well as other medical schools both in Australia and internationally.

For more details on any of these projects, please contact the Medical Education Unit team.

• Selecting medical students
• Simulation and medical education
• Home-grown doctors
• Competence in clinical psychology students
• Distress in medical students
• Online learning
• Medicine in the community
• Learning approaches
• Academic writing support
• Cultural diversity
• Medicine and popular culture 
• Getting into medicine

Selecting medical students

Project Title: Selecting medical students
Research Team: David Harding (PhD student), Barbara Griffin (College of Health & Science), Ian Wilson, Neville Yeomans (School of Medicine)

David Harding, supervised by Ian Wilson and Alex Yeung (Centre for Education Research), along with Barbara Griffin and Neville Yeomans has been developing and researching the use of Multiple mini-interviews in the selection of medical students to the UWS program. David’s thesis is exploring the process in great detail and we now realise that what has been developed is innovative and world leading. During this process Barbara Griffin has led the research of various aspects of the program.

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Simulation and medical education

Project Title: Integrating problem-based-learning, lectue and practical basic sciences knowledge using simulation - A pilot study
Research Team: Janet Chan, Ian Wilson, Vaughan Macefield, John Morley, David Mahns
Funding: School of Medicine

Simulation has been used extensively to teach medical students clinical skills. In this project we are exploring the use of simulation to teach basic physiology and pathophysiology in the early years of the course. The project will run in 2010.

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Home-grown doctors

Project Title: Keeping pace: A critical longitudinal analysis of the psychosocial determinants of seeding success in educating home-grown doctors for regional communities
Research Team: Rhonda Craven, Ian Wilson
Funding: ARC Discovery Project (DP0988136)

Australia currently has a medical workforce situation which, if unchecked, will see a deepening of the shortage of doctors in rural and regional communities. Elucidating the impact of psychosocial drivers on medical education outcomes will identify potent practical strategies that seed success. The outcomes of this research have the potential to 'break the cycle' of doctor shortages in underserved areas by generating new solutions to: improve Australia's capacity to strengthen home-grown medical education; address doctor shortages regionally; and build capacity at community and individual levels. This research has important implications for the future of home-grown medical education nationally and internationally.

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Competence in clinical psychology students

Project Title: Assessing the competence of masters of clinical psychology students
Research Team: Leanne Humphreys (PhD student, School of Psychology), Ian Wilson, Rocco Crino (School of Psychology)
Funding: Australian Psychology Association (NSW Branch)

This project focuses on developing and validating an innovative approach to assessing the clinical competence of Master students in clinical psychology.

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Distress in medical students

Project Title: Recognition and reponse to distress in medical student peers
Research Team: Catherine Leahy (PhD student, University of Adelaide), Ray Peterson (University of Queensland), Ian Wilson, Anne Tonkin (UofA), Deborah Turnbull (UofA), Jonathan Newbury (UofA)
Funding: beyondblue

This project focuses on a medical student’s ability to recognise distress in peers and how to respond to the distress. The project is now completed.

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Online learning

Project Title: Development of high quality online learning packages for medical education
Research Team: James Dalziel (Macquarie University), Bronwen Dalziel, Development teams (School of Medicine) et al.
Funding: Australian Learning & Teaching Council

The school is currently developing on-line learning packages for Years 3 to 5 of the course. The project is designed to develop these to the point where they are of exceptional quality.

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Medicine in the community

Project Title: Medicine in context
Research Team: Ian Wilson, Hilary Bambrick (Population Health), Louella McCarthy (School of Medicine), Tim Wills, Roslyn Weaver

Medicine in Context is an innovative program to be established in Year 3 in 2009. It will give students extensive exposure to community services and general practice. The project will explore the impact of the program on students’ attitudes to community health service.

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Learning approaches

Project Title: Learning approaches across health and science courses (LASAC)
Research Team: Yenna Salamonson, Ragbir Bhathal, Cheang Khoo, Jane Koch, Ian Wilson, Roslyn Weaver
Funding: Education Research Grants in Health & Science (ERGHS)

This project aims to investigate the learning approaches and stress levels of students and their relationship to academic performance across five selected health and science units. A qualitative substudy will investigate this topic in more depth.

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Academic writing support

Project Title: Academic writing support in the School of Medicine
Research Team: Roslyn Weaver, Ian Wilson

This project explores academic writing support strategies in the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the effectiveness of a publication group as a support tool.

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Cultural diversity

Project Title: Universal diverse orientation (UDO) of health sciences and business students
Research Team: Yenna Salamonson, Roslyn Weaver, Kath Peters, Stephen Teo, Ian Wilson, Sharon Andrew, Debra Jackson, Andrea Bialocerkowski, Jane Koch

The UDO study investigates professional identity, cultural diversity, and comfort with differences across health sciences and business courses at UWS.

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Medicine and popular culture

Project Title: Medical role models in popular culture
Researchers: Roslyn Weaver, Ian Wilson
Funding: UWS Research Seed Grant Scheme

This study explores images of medicine and the medical profession in popular culture, medical students' attitudes to fictional medical role models, and students' professional identity.

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Getting into medicine

Project Title: Getting into medicine
Researchers: Ian Wilson, Roslyn Weaver

The Getting Into Medicine project looks at students' experiences as they prepare for applying to and entering medical school.

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