Research Spotlight: How Formal Training Shapes Medical Educators

That challenge sits at the heart of a new qualitative study by Roland Joseph D. Tan, MD, DHPE, published in Annals of Medicine and Medical Sciences. The article examines how medical educators and clinical trainers perceive the value and uses of a Master of Health Professions Education, often known as the MHPE, and why formal training may matter in a field where much teaching has historically been learned by observing others.

We spoke with the author, Roland Joseph D. Tan of the National Teachers Training Center for Health Professions at the University of the Philippines Manila, to learn more about health professions education, medical educator development, and how the MHPE can shape teaching practice and academic leadership.

Health professions education sits at the intersection of patient care, institutional quality, and the formation of future clinicians. When educators are asked to design outcomes, revise curricula, assess learners, lead committees, and respond to crises such as the pandemic, they need more than experience alone. They need conceptual tools, reflective habits, and a shared language for educational improvement.

This study matters because it makes visible the professional development journey behind effective medical teaching. It shows that formal postgraduate education can help educators move from imitation and intuition toward a more systematic understanding of why particular teaching and assessment choices work.

Dr. Tan reflected on the broader significance of the study: “Medical schools and clinical training programs should view a Master in Health Professions Education, or other master’s programs in education, not simply as an academic credential but as a strategic investment in developing educational leadership and teaching capacity. We found that formal training in health professions education can strengthen educators’ teaching competencies, improve their ability to approach education systematically, and open opportunities for leadership and curriculum-related roles.

“As such, institutions should move beyond relying primarily on informal learning or short faculty development workshops and create structured pathways for educators to undertake advanced training in health professions education. These should be coupled with institutional support, protected time, mentoring, and opportunities to apply the training.

“Lastly, the value of the MHPE appears to be greatest when the institution creates an environment in which newly acquired educational expertise can actually be used, for example through curriculum development, assessment reform, faculty development, educational research, and leadership roles.”

The article offers a careful account of how MHPE graduates understood the degree after returning to teaching, curriculum work, and academic leadership. Three contributions stand out.

• Formal training helped educators name and strengthen competencies that informal learning often leaves implicit. Participants described early aspirations to teach well, but they also recognized the limits of learning only through role modeling or observation. One quoted participant said, “the student or the trainee learn what they see, but they do not see everything.”
• The MHPE supported practical changes in assessment, instructional design, and curriculum reform. Participants reported using what they learned in exam blueprinting, curriculum revision, lecture delivery, and the transition toward outcome-based education, including one participant who said that work on test construction “helped.”
• The degree opened wider professional and leadership opportunities. The findings describe graduates taking roles in Medical Education Units, curriculum committees, examination standardization, faculty development, and professional boards, with one participant explaining, “I am heading the MEU because of my background.”

Dr. Tan also reflected on what surprised him most in the participants’ accounts: “The value of an MHPE extended far beyond acquiring the needed teaching skills or an additional academic qualification. Participants described the program as transformative, providing a systematic foundation for teaching, assessment, curriculum development, and educational research while also shaping their professional identity and opening opportunities for educational leadership. It was also notable that their initial motivation was largely intrinsic: they wanted to become better educators.”

The study used a qualitative collective case study design. It focused on medical faculty members of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and clinical trainers at the Philippine General Hospital who had completed the MHPE at the National Teachers Training Center for Health Professions.

Data came from semi-structured online interviews and document review, including curriculum vitae and historical MHPE curricula. The analysis used reflexive thematic analysis, open data-driven coding, and cross-case comparison, with an audit trail to strengthen rigor. There was no separate quantitative analysis, although the article reports participant counts, service years, and program completion periods to contextualize the cases.

After transcripts and documents were read repeatedly and coded through reflexive thematic analysis, the author reports that the transcripts were also analyzed using AILYZE, now known as Evidano, to strengthen dependability.

Evidano’s role was specific and bounded. The article states that the tool “generated a complementary codebook and yielded 11 granular themes,” and that the final thematic structure integrated insights from both analytic approaches. In other words, Evidano supported the analytic workflow, while the scholarly judgment, interpretation, and final thematic synthesis remained with the author.

Dr. Tan also noted how AI tools can support careful research workflows when used responsibly: “As a quantitative researcher, doing this study was really challenging. Despite attending courses on qualitative research methods and data analysis, I had a hard time doing the thematic analysis manually. After rigorously analyzing the interview data manually, I used Evidano for a second pass through the data. Evidano helped identify more recurring patterns, better organized relevant excerpts, suggested potential additional themes, and facilitated better comparison across cases. However, I used Evidano as an assistive tool rather than allowing it to determine the findings. I reviewed my original analyses, compared them to those of Evidano, then integrated them.

“As scholars, we need to use AI responsibly and ethically. I used Evidano because I had difficulty finding another colleague adept with qualitative research who could spend time to teach and analyze the qualitative data with me. But I initially did the data analysis manually, going over the interview transcriptions multiple times. Afterwards, Evidano helped me identify additional themes that I think were important to the study. It was my way of ensuring that I did the initial interpretations.

“Researchers need to verify AI-generated interpretations against the original data, remain alert to bias and loss of contextual nuance, protect participant confidentiality, and transparently disclose how AI was used. AI should support the researcher’s analytical process, not become the researcher.”

For medical schools and training hospitals, the study points to a practical institutional question. If high-quality teaching, assessment, curriculum reform, and educational leadership are now core expectations, then institutions may need clearer pathways, protected time, mentorship, and recognition for educators who pursue formal training in health professions education.

For qualitative and health professions researchers, the article also offers a useful example of responsible AI-assisted analysis. Evidano was used as a complement to reflexive thematic work, not as a replacement for interpretation, and the final structure was shaped through integration, comparison, and scholarly judgment.

As health professions education becomes more complex, this research reminds readers that educator development is not only about acquiring techniques. It is about building professional identity, judgment, and leadership capacity. Dr. Tan summarized the broader takeaway this way: “An MHPE is more than an additional academic qualification. It can transform how medical educators approach teaching, assessment, curriculum development, and educational leadership, while also shaping their professional identity. The days of the ‘see one, do one’ way of teaching should be gone, especially amid the changing learning styles of the different generations of health professionals.

“However, its full value is realized only when institutions support educators in applying these competencies. Investing in health professions education should therefore be viewed not only as faculty development, but as an investment in the educational capacity and long-term quality of medical schools and clinical training programs.”