Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

Dr Jo Horsburgh, Principal Teaching Fellow in Medical Education

Last week colleagues from department of Primary Care and Public Health and I attended the Association of Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) conference in Vienna.

Attendees from across the world meet to share and discuss the latest innovations, thinking, and research in medical education. This year’s themes included Threshold Concepts and Activity theory with keynote talks from Professor Ray Land (University of Durham) and Prof Yrjö Engeström (University of Helsinki). In addition to a wide range of workshops and symposia, the conference also provided us with an excellent opportunity to meet with our collaborators from Australia, South Africa and the Netherlands to discuss shared projects.

I was also fortunate to have the opportunity to present some research from my doctoral studies on medical educator identity. This research explored the facilitators and barriers to professional identity development and prompted much discussion around how we can best support medical educators in their development.

There was a wide range of presentations from Imperial, including MEd in ULT alumnus, Dr Andy McKeown, who presented from his dissertation on educational authenticity in longitudinal integrated clerkships.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to share ideas and generate new projects in order to best develop medical education at Imperial.