Qualitative research methodology has become an established part of the medical education research field. A very popular data-collection technique used in qualitative research is the "focus group". Focus groups in this Guide are defined as "… group discussions organized to explore a specific set of issues … The group is focused in the sense that it involves some kind of collective activity … crucially, focus groups are distinguished from the broader category of group interview by the explicit use of the group interaction as research data" (Kitzinger 1994, p. 103). This Guide has been designed to provide people who are interested in using focus groups with the information and tools to organize, conduct, analyze and publish sound focus group research within a broader understanding of the background and theoretical grounding of the focus group method. The Guide is organized as follows: Firstly, to describe the evolution of the focus group in the social sciences research domain. Secondly, to describe the paradigmatic fit of focus groups within qualitative research approaches in the field of medical education. After defining, the nature of focus groups and when, and when not, to use them, the Guide takes on a more practical approach, taking the reader through the various steps that need to be taken in conducting effective focus group research. Finally, the Guide finishes with practical hints towards writing up a focus group study for publication.

These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that binary checklists may not be valid measures of increasing clinical competence.

Despite the increasing recognition over the last two decades of emotion as 'socially constructed', the view of emotion as individualised is deeply embedded in our language and conceptual frameworks. The discourses that inform our emotion talk and practice as teachers and health care professionals are important to consider for the effects they have on competence and professional identity, as well as on practitioner and patient well-being. Expanded knowledge of how emotion is 'put to work' within medical education can make visible the invisible and unexamined emotion schemas that serve to reproduce problematic professional behaviours. For this discussion, three main discourses of emotion will be identified: a physiological discourse in which emotion is described as located inside the individual as bodily states which are universally experienced; emotion as a form of competence related to skills and abilities, and a socio-cultural discourse which calls on conceptions from the humanities and social sciences and directs our attention to emotion's function in social exchanges and its role as a social, political and cultural mediator.

Live simulation is used in teaching, assessment, and research at all levels of training in psychiatric education. Simulated and standardized patients are useful and appropriate for teaching and assessment and are well accepted at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. There is also an important place for role play. Further research is needed regarding the implications of different simulation technologies in psychiatry.