Office of Medical Education and Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, 521 ParnassusAvenue, San Francisco, CA 94143-0410, USA.
Med Educ. 2010 Dec;44(12):1175-84. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03768.x. Epub 2010 Nov 11.
Medical education researchers are inherently collaborators. This paper presents a discussion of theoretical frameworks, issues and challenges around collaborative research to prepare medical education researchers to enter into successful collaborations. It gives emphasis to the conceptual issues associated with collaborative research and applies these to medical education research. Although not a systematic literature review, the paper provides a rich discussion of issues which medical education researchers might consider when undertaking collaborative studies.
Building on the work of others, we have classified collaborative research in three dimensions according to: the number of administrative units represented; the number of academic fields present, and the manner in which knowledge is created. Although some literature on collaboration focuses on the more traditional positivist perspective and emphasises outcomes, other literature comes from the constructivist framework, in which research is not driven by hypotheses and the approaches emphasised, but by the interaction between investigator and subject.
Collaborations are more effective when participants overtly clarify their motivations, values, definitions of appropriate data and accepted methodologies. These should be agreed upon prior to commencing a study. The way we currently educate researchers should be restructured if we want them to be able to undertake interdisciplinary research. Despite calls for researchers to be educated differently, most training programmes for developing researchers have demonstrated a limited, if not contrary, response to these calls.
Collaborative research in medical education should be driven by the problem being investigated, by the new knowledge gained and by the interpersonal interactions that may be achieved. Success rests on recognising that many of the research problems we, as medical educators, address are fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature. This represents a transition to bridge the dichotomy often presented in medical education between theory building and addressing practical needs.
医学教育研究人员本质上是合作者。本文讨论了围绕协作研究的理论框架、问题和挑战，以使医学教育研究人员能够成功地开展合作。它强调了与协作研究相关的概念问题，并将这些问题应用于医学教育研究。虽然不是系统的文献综述，但本文对医学教育研究人员在进行协作研究时可能考虑的问题进行了深入讨论。
在他人工作的基础上，我们根据以下三个维度对协作研究进行了分类：代表的行政单位数量；存在的学术领域数量，以及知识创造的方式。虽然一些关于合作的文献侧重于更传统的实证主义观点，并强调成果，但其他文献来自建构主义框架，在这种框架中，研究不是由假设和强调的方法驱动，而是由研究者和被研究者之间的相互作用驱动。
当参与者公开阐明他们的动机、价值观、适当数据的定义和可接受的方法时，合作会更加有效。这些应该在开始研究之前达成一致。如果我们希望研究人员能够进行跨学科研究，那么我们目前的研究人员教育方式就需要进行重组。尽管呼吁对研究人员进行不同的教育，但大多数培养研究人员的培训计划对这些呼吁的反应有限，如果不是相反的话。
医学教育中的协作研究应该由正在研究的问题、所获得的新知识以及可能实现的人际互动来驱动。成功取决于认识到，我们作为医学教育工作者所解决的许多研究问题本质上是跨学科的。这代表着向医学教育中经常提出的理论构建和解决实际需求之间的二分法过渡。
