Master of Health Professions Education (MHPE)

For assistance with your research, contact: 

Dean Giustini, UBC biomedical librarian E-mail: dean.giustini@ubc.ca

• Book consultations, tutorials and workshops on searching to support your research.
• Also: see the library's online tutorials and guides.

Here are some tutorials you can view after the library workshops (or before you meet with Dean):

• MEDLINE (Ovid) tutorial (all videos)
  • Searching in the Education Databases (2 videos)
• Getting Started - Literature Reviews - UBC Library - https://guides.library.ubc.ca/litreviews
  • Sullivan GM. Why Are Medical Education Literature Reviews So Hard to Do? J Grad Med Educ. 2018 Oct;10(5):481-485. [link]
• Planning Your Review - Knowledge Synthesis - UBC Library - https://guides.library.ubc.ca/SystematicReviews

BOOKS - MEDICAL EDUCATION

• Search Summon at UBC Library, and use limits at the left to narrow your search. 
• Note: The Library has both print and electronic / digital versions of most books.
  • E-book: Understanding medical education : evidence, theory and practice / Tim Swanwick.

JOURNALS - MEDICAL EDUCATION

• Key (or "high impact") medical education journals
• Search UBC Library's journal holdings 
• ORDER items via Document Delivery.

ITEMS NOT HELD AT UBC LIBRARY

• ORDER via Interlibrary Loan.

Print version @ UBC Library

Search for research papers in these databases (for more ideas, see guides on medicine, medical education or education).

• Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) - https://www.afmc.ca/

• Association for the Study of Medical Education (UK) - https://www.asme.org.uk/

• MedEdPortal - https://www.mededportal.org/

• UBC Centre for Health Education Scholarship (CHES) - https://ches.med.ubc.ca/

Planning your search / your research

Research frameworks aid in planning searches in the databases. First, think about key parts of your research question(s) and identify YOUR MAJOR terms first. (Put them in order of priority.)

PICO is often used as a framework but there are others that can be used in medical education. Use one of these worksheets to jot down ideas.

Consider keywords, phrases and subject headings that capture your research. How will you combine keywords, phrases and subject headings (AND, OR, NOT)? What kind of limits should apply (dates, study design, language)?

• PICO worksheet: patient/population/problem, intervention, comparison, outcome (see example)
• SPICE worksheet: setting, population/perspective, intervention, comparison, evaluation
• ECLIPSE worksheet: expectation, client group, location, impact, professionals, service

SEARCH w/ keywords AND subject headings for more systematic retrieval. Subject headings are given to each article by librarians and indexers to describe (or "analyze") their subject content. Indexers make errors so it is recommended you add unique keywords to your searches to locate relevant papers. Keyword searching is useful in locating recent papers as new topics are published. In searching by keyword, think of similar terms, synonyms, variant spellings (UK/US) and variant word endings. 

Do some quick searching in databases to get an idea of keywords and subject headings that might apply to your topic. Look at citations of relevant articles to see how they were indexed ...and use that information to refine your search strategy. 

Choosing databases

UBC Library provides access to hundreds of databases.  For more ideas, try the UBC Library research guides. 

Documents produced on all levels of government, academia, business and organization in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body (definition from Grey Lit Network Service). Examples: theses, dissertations, reports, conference proceedings, government reports, consensus guidelines and data.

A few suggestions:

Some databases track citations, and how many times an article has been cited by other scholars. This tracking is used to see how important an article is in the field, its influence and its contribution to the evidence in medical education.

• You can work with a librarian to learn how to manage your citations.
• UBC Library provides training on using Mendeley and Zotero through the UBC Research Commons; and we provide access to Endnote Web via our Web of Science subscription.
• See the UBC Library's guide on Endnote Basic. For a full subscription, see the Endnote X20 website.

• To view upcoming workshops and to register for a session, visit the Library Workshops and Events Calendar. Individual consultation appointments are also, via the "Book a consultation" button on the Research Commons homepage.