When an innovation is tried at different institutions, how do you know that the implementation at location A is similar enough to the implementation at location B to qualify as the same innovation? Read on, and check out the podcast here (or on iTunes!)
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KeyLIME Session 197:
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Reference:
Horsley, T, Regehr, G. When are two interventions the same? Implications for reporting guidelines in education.Medical Educ 2018 52: 139–147
Reviewer: Lara Varpio (@LaraVarpio)
Background
Horsley and Regher point out an essential consideration vis a vis the reporting of educational innovations: When an innovation is tried at different institutions, how do you know that the implementation at location A is similar enough to the implementation at location B to qualify as the same innovation? In other words, how many modifications can we make to an educational intervention and still call it an implementation of the same intervention?
Purpose
The purpose is to foster reflection on the reporting of medical education innovations / interventions. If there are 10 different papers reporting about the success of Intervention A in their context, how do we know that all 10 sites engaged in the intervention in the same way? Or in a same enough way to qualify as examples of the same kind of intervention? If our community does not attend to these concerns, we will not be able to build on the knowledge and innovations developed by our peers.
Key Conclusions
Horsley and Regher have two conditions that they would like to see come out of this argument:
- We do need to report the techniques of the interventions; and
- We need to report “the extent to which the standard elements, as implemented at a particular site, created the learning conditions that underpin the educational model on which the intervention is based.”
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