Recognizing this infrastructure helps us appreciate that medical progress comes not from talent and hard work alone, but is also the product of a facilitating structure many decades, even many centuries, in the making. Students and physicians with scientific questions to pursue work within a wide array of institutionalized activities that guide their careers and promote their work. With regard to medical education, however, while recent progress in the professional development of physician educators has filled in some of the layers of the infrastructure, there are still many gaps. The filling in of those gaps and the invention of new strategies that will support medical teaching as a scholarly activity is our work in the coming years. The forum is like the research meetings common in other disciplines.
Colleagues analyze, discuss and offer constructive criticism.
Projects have ranged from an interventional study of faculty development for clinicians involved in preclinical teaching to a teaching program on communication skills for residents. Presented projects have been at various stages of maturation, from early brainstorming to externally-funded research.