Health Professions Education Centre (HPEC), Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
BICC Contact Information
BICC leader: Jan Illing
BICC members: Prof Walter Eppich, Mr Gareth Edwards and Mrs Mary Smyth.
BICC Background
RCSI’s Health Professions Education Centre (HPEC) is a member of BEME and supports systematic reviewing in health professions education across all of our multi-professional schools and multi-national campuses. HPEC was elected as one of nineteen international BEME International Collaborating Centres (BICC).
The RCSI BICC at HPEC contribution to the BEME Collaboration includes:
- developing, producing and managing BEME reviews
- promoting the creation and use of BEME reviews to inform medical and health professions education
- supporting stakeholders in the identification and construction of relevant topics for new reviews
- creating an awareness of and promoting a culture of best evidence education amongst educators, researchers, academic medical professionals and other stakeholders
- reviewing incoming BEME protocols from around the world
- developing and chairing the BEME Education and Training Committee at RCSI
The RCSI BICC has a database of multinational, multi-professional faculty across the RCSI group; this includes faculty in RCSI Dublin, Schools in Malaysia and Dubai, a University in Bahrain, and teaching hospitals in Ireland. A number of faculty members have experience in systematic reviewing including Cochrane reviews and we have a close collaboration with an information scientists at the RCSI library. This database enables the RCSI BICC to tap into a valuable range of professionals to engage in reviewing BEME protocols as necessary.
RCSI BICC Primary Contacts
Jan Illing (BEME Education Committee Chair), PhD, M.Phil, BSc (Hons)Professor of Health Professions Education | Health Professions Education Centre (HPEC)
Jan has worked extensively in the field of health professions education over a period of 25 years. During her career she has been involved in and supervised many systematic reviews and realist synthesis. Jan has extensive experience of conducting research across a range of themes within health professions education including: medical transitions (from the transition from student to doctor and including international transitions), professionalism, interprofessional education, longitudinal integrated clerkships, clinical supervision, assessment, revalidation and workplace bullying.
Walter Eppich, MD, PhD, FSSH is Professor and Chair of the RCSI SIM Centre for Simulation Education and Research. With a clinical background as an emergency paediatrician, Prof Eppich’s research themes relate to professional communication, interprofessional collaborative practice, team reflection, healthcare debriefing, and team adaptation. He has experience with systematic and scoping reviews.
His research program seeks to delineate the contribution of workplace talk and team interactions to learning and performance.
Main areas of interest/expertise
The RCSI BICC offers the following areas of expertise:
- Transitions: includes transitions from medical student to doctor, junior to senior clinician and the transition from overseas qualified clinician to a new host country.
- The clinical learning environment: this theme focuses on Interprofessional Education, clinical supervision, wellbeing and incudes negative behaviours and experiences of workplace bullying in the clinical environment.
- Experiential learning conversations such as feedback, coaching and healthcare debriefing
- Simulation-based education
- Team science
- Realist synthesis: a literature review process that aims to develop a theory to explain how an intervention works.
- Technology Enhanced Learning
- Curriculum development and evaluation
- Professionalism
Contributions made to BEME
- Currently there is one BEME review in progress at the RCSI due for submission and publication. An international collaboration involved in “A systematic Review of the Psychometric and Edumetric Properties of Assessment Tools for Medical Consultation for Undergraduates” (Prof Pawlikowska PI and colleagues from Maastricht University, Warwick University and the University of Antwerp)
- RCSI has produced Guide 51 Flannery/Uygur published in 2019 "A Best Evidence in Medical Education Systematic Review to determine the most effective teaching methods that develop reflection in medical students"
- Development and production of new BEME reviews
- Promoting BEME reviews to inform medical and health professions education
- Supporting stakeholders in the review process
- Fostering a culture of best evidence medical education
- Providing mentorship
- Contributing to BEME committee remits