Education in <scp>ANZJOG</scp> and under <scp>RANZCOG</scp>: Primary purpose or secondary intention?

In June 1963 Sir Arthur Bell, then President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, gave the 10th Arthur Wilson Memorial Oration, at the National Gallery in Melbourne. In his oration Sir Arthur quoted the 1929 memorandum of association, written at the inception of the College and outlining its purpose: ‘The encouragement of the study and the improvement of the practice of obstetrics and gynaecology, subjects which should be inseparably interwoven’.1 The subject of education in our speciality field, and the role of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RANZCOG) in overseeing that education, has continued to inspire the Arthur Wilson Oration speakers in the decades since Sir Arthur Bell gave his speech. In 1971 in an oration titled ‘Education in Gynaecology and Obstetrics: The Challenge’, DG Bonham named rural training and retention of medical services as the biggest problem facing clinical education in obstetrics and gynaecology (O&G) in Australia.2 In a 1989 lecture delivered by FC Hinde in Brisbane, the speaker proposed that the length of training should be reduced (from six years, as it is currently) and commented that ‘at times I think the entry to Fellowship Application form should contain a box for the candidate's pension number’.3 Right through to Professor Caroline de Costa's 2022 Arthur Wilson Oration discussing the importance of gender equity and diversity issues in selection and training, the giants of our speciality have debated and discussed how best to deliver and protect our education and training program and how to evaluate those who are traversing that program on their journey to become specialists and Fellows of RANZCOG. Alongside the august opinions of the luminaries of the community of obstetricians and gynaecologists, what does the ANZJOG publication history for research in education look like over the years? A swift review of the ANZJOG online archive, using the search term ‘training’, shows 1421 hits over the history of the Journal. Excluding non-relevant articles, book reviews and duplicates, there are 95 articles in which the primary subject is education or training. Including only those which constitute primary research (ie leaving out the editorials, opinion pieces and letters to the editor) there have been a total of 56 articles on this subject over more than 60 years of ANZJOG editions. There is room for improvement. In line with the global literature, ANZJOG shows a relative explosion of education-themed articles since the 1990s, with a total of nine education research articles between 2010 and 2015, compared to 14 between 2015 and 2020 and already 18 from 2020 to the current date. Appropriate training numbers and duration remain the subjects of active research, with simulation training continuing to be an area of growth. Education research evaluated at Kirkpatrick Level 1 (learner satisfaction)4 is slowly receding to make way for the higher levels of K2 (knowledge acquisition), and 3 (skill retention). Even the educationalist's holy grail of Kirkpatrick Level 4 evaluation (impact on real world outcomes) has been gaining prominence in ANZJOG over the last decade.5, 6 Qualitative research in education is starting to appear7 in line with global trends in the education literature and in recognition of the increasing importance of this type of research in understanding the experiences of learners and supervisors, and the real-world value of our education interventions. What are the future aims for education research in ANZJOG and for education promotion at the College? For ANZJOG the introduction of an Associate Editor with a primary interest in education marks the commitment of the Journal to encourage education-based research from our readership, particularly from early-career researchers and trainees. Educational research is an ideal area for trainees to explore, positioned as they are as experiential experts in the field, and we echo the words of Dr Scott White from his opening editorial as Editor-in-Chief8 – ANZJOG should be a safe and friendly entry portal for all our trainees taking their first steps into the world of published research. Will we be publishing our own quick and dirty literature search, described in the previous paragraph? No. The commitment to promoting education-based research does not free us from the obligation to only consider good-quality research, in keeping with international guidance and with local ethical protocols. Operating on the back of an envelope outside the PRISMA guidelines is no more acceptable in educational research than it is in clinical research and we will be aiming to increase the quantity of our publications in educational research while maintaining the high quality that ANZJOG readers have come to expect. As for potential research topics of interest to the readers of ANZJOG, the difficulty of delivering training that is as applicable in rural practice as it is in a city-based teaching hospital is as relevant to us now as it was to DG Bonham in 1971. The issue of the correct duration of training and sub-speciality training, and the ever-present question of the golden number of procedures to which trainees should be held, is as much of a concern for us now as it was when FC Hinde discussed it in 1989. The question of how ‘inseparably interwoven’ the two halves of our speciality should be, excites as much interest now as it did for Sir Arthur Bell in 1963. Only by the judicious exploration of these issues, through carefully designed and well-executed research, can we move forward with these questions in an evidence-informed way. Additionally we have an obligation to evaluate and publish the impact of our own educational innovations. The longitudinal outcomes of College processes, including the selection of trainees, the introduction of new workplace-based assessments and the growing use of simulation to underpin our clinical learning must all be scrutinised carefully and appropriately in order to continue to hold ourselves and our College accountable. As regards future directions for the College itself in education and training, the launch of the new curriculum, adapted from the CanMEDS Physician Competency Framework9 with permission of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, brings a huge change in focus, toward competency-based education and the recognition that collaboration, communication and cultural safety in practice are not ‘non-technical’ or ‘soft’ skills, but the essential foundations of our practice and the building blocks of our trade. How we as educators respond to the challenge of guiding our trainees toward acquiring those skills and becoming reflective practitioners will depend on our own competencies in areas of education, such as feedback provision – up until now an assumed rather than a proven skill for a RANZCOG Fellow. The enthusiastic uptake of the new Advanced Training Module in Education proves that we have an engaged and committed group of trainees and supervisors, whose future careers are likely to have education and training as a significant component. As we seek to establish a Community of Practice for these RANZCOG educators these are the issues we will need to be debating. Our domain name is ranzcog.edu.au – it is time to live up to the promise implied by those three middle letters and put education front and centre of the priorities for the College and for ANZJOG as the College journal.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.