The assessment of learners in health professions education – an interview with Dr Shiphra Ginsburg Artwork

KIPRIME Podcast

The Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education is a major international award and was created to recognise and stimulate high-quality research in the field and to honour scientists who have made a significant contribution to medical and healthcare education. In this podcast series we’ll explore the origins of the KIPRIME and discover the passion and commitment of the people who made it happen; we’ll also hear from previous winners and discover how their research has helped to blaze a trail in this emerging field. Inspiring and supporting the next generation of researchers is at the heart of the prize and a major initiative in 2019 was to establish a fellowship programme. This exciting project has brought together some of the brightest minds who are at the cutting edge of research in medical education. From examining the neuroscientific correlates of clinical reasoning to exploring the dominance of the global north, we’ll hear from 13 inspiring scientists, doctors, psychologists and researchers.Your host for the series is Alina Jenkins; a BBC presenter and journalist since 2001 with an extensive background in communicating science. She also works in the pharmaceutical, finance and engineering sectors as a communications coach.

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KIPRIME Podcast

The assessment of learners in health professions education – an interview with Dr Shiphra Ginsburg

February 23, 2021 • Alina Jenkins

Dr Shiphra Ginsburg is a professor of medicine at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, a staff physician at Mount Sinai Hospital and a scientist at the Wilson Centre for Research in Education. She is also the Canada Research Chair in Health Professions Education.

Her research looks at the assessment of learners in health professions education - an area which has historically focused on numeric scores, rating scales and standardized, “objective” tests. This has led to a situation where subjectivity, which is a natural part of how human beings make judgments and decisions about each other, is ignored and devalued. As a result, assessment has become inadvertently undermined in multiple contexts. Dr Ginsburg’s research aims to reposition the importance of context and subjectivity in assessment and feedback.