Scoping reviews in medical education: A scoping review

Abstract

Objectives Over the last two decades, the number of scoping reviews in core medical education journals has increased by 4200%. Despite this growth, research on scoping reviews provides limited information about their nature, including how they are conducted or why medical educators undertake this knowledge synthesis type. This gap makes it difficult to know where the field stands and may hamper attempts to improve the conduct, reporting and utility of scoping reviews. Thus, this review characterises the nature of medical education scoping reviews to identify areas for improvement and highlight future research opportunities. Method The authors searched PubMed for scoping reviews published between 1/1999 and 4/2020 in 14 medical education journals. The authors extracted and summarised key bibliometric data, the rationales given for conducting a scoping review, the research questions and key reporting elements as described in the PRISMA‐ScR. Rationales and research questions were mapped to Arksey and O'Malley's reasons for conducting a scoping review. Results One hundred and one scoping reviews were included. On average, 10.1 scoping reviews (SD = 13.1, median = 4) were published annually with the most reviews published in 2019 (n = 42). Authors described multiple reasons for undertaking scoping reviews; the most prevalent being to summarise and disseminate research findings (n = 77). In 11 reviews, the rationales for the scoping review and the research questions aligned. No review addressed all elements of the PRISMA‐ScR, with few authors publishing a protocol (n = 2) or including stakeholders (n = 20). Authors identified shortcomings of scoping reviews, including lack of critical appraisal. Conclusions Scoping reviews are increasingly conducted in medical education and published by most core journals. Scoping reviews aim to map the depth and breadth of emerging topics; as such, they have the potential to play a critical role in the practice, policy and research of medical education. However, these results suggest improvements are needed for this role to be fully realised.

A Scoping Review of Assessment Methods Following Undergraduate Clinical Placements in Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine

“…We included any study where discussion did not resolve perceived differences. To improve the rigor of our study, we used the guidelines published by Maggio et al in all stages of our review ( 16 ). We consulted with key external stakeholders but this step yielded no additional information.…”

“…These steps are (1) identifying research questions, (2) identifying relevant articles, (3) study selection, (4) charting the data, (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results and (6) consulting with stakeholders. In addition, we applied a scoping review quality checklist to enhance the rigor of our findings ( 16 ). The overarching purposes of our scoping review were (a) to describe the nature of existing research about undergraduate assessment after anesthesia/ICM placements and (b) to identify research gaps in this area.…”

Emotion in remediation: A scoping review of the medical education literature

“…Third, we looked for explicit mentions of emotion and therefore did not highlight records where emotion was implicit, such as some records on self-regulated learning. Fourth, as is common with scoping reviews, 164 and as a result of the heterogeneity of our reviewed records, we did not conduct critical appraisal of individual records and also cannot comment on the accuracy with which authors attributed emotions to learners. Fifth, general limitations to the scoping review methodology apply here: the review is necessarily broad and does not answer a specific question but rather gives a more general 'lay of the land,' which may help guide future research.…”

“…Sixth, some guidelines 48 suggest optional expert consultation to check the findings of scoping reviews, which we did not do in this review but could represent an important further step in studying emotion in remediation. Seventh, we did not use a registered review protocol; though uncommonly used for scoping reviews 164 and arguably impeding the scoping review's iterative and reflective process, 165 registered protocols may be helpful in avoiding duplicative work and improving transparency. 165 Finally, there are numerous affective factors in addition to emotion, such as motivation and insight, that affect learning; these were outside the scope of this review but offer further areas for study to improve learning during remediation and may have particular applicability in ongoing work related to self-regulated learning and control-value theory in remediation.…”

The Study on the Independent and Available Experimental Teaching Mode of the Functional Experiment of Medical Science Based on Achievement

“…This requires the experimental instructor to constantly strengthen the expansion and update of their knowledge and skills to achieve rich expertise and comprehensive technology. They should not only master the theoretical knowledge and experimental technology of their specialty, master the most cutting-edge scientific research information and technology trends of their specialty, but also understand the theoretical knowledge and technology of other related specialties, and understand the latest progress of medical research frontier in associated fields [6]. Therefore, open experimental teaching is also a challenge to teachers, which is conducive to the growth of teachers and interdisciplinary penetration.…”