Role of graduate courses in promoting educational scholarship of health care professionals.

PROBLEM ADDRESSED: Many courses are offered to health care professionals to improve educational scholarship and scholarly teaching. The literature on the effect of such courses on promoting educational scholarship and scholarly teaching is currently suboptimal. OBJECTIVE OF PROGRAM: To evaluate scholarly productivity of health care professional learners participating in 2 graduate courses in which curricula and assignments facilitated experiential learning. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: A retrospective analysis of course assignments and publications of learners from 2007 to 2014 was conducted. Learners' current positions were identified through Google Scholar searches, and publication of course work was identified through PubMed or EMBASE author searches. There were 137 learners, with a male to female ratio of 3:7, consisting of physicians (73%) and other health care professionals (27%). During the 7 years, 50% completed both courses, 42% only the first course, and 8% only the second course. Of the learners whose current positions could be identified, 66% worked at academic centres, 20% at community hospitals or office practices, and 5% were in senior leadership positions. Current positions were unidentifiable through public records for 9% of learners. Sixty-eight percent of learners (93 of 137) published 1050 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Twenty-six percent of learners (35 of 137) published 1 or more articles based on their course assignments, for a total of 49 peer-reviewed articles; 80% of articles were published within 3 years of completing the course.
CONCLUSION: Experiential learning facilitated by curricular design and assignments coupled with mentorship stimulated scholarly publications. Educational courses should design curricula to promote scholarship in learners and evaluate their effect. Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada.