Reflections on the Tucson Education Forum
By Emily WhiteHorse
Chair, Education Committee
The success of the PAEA Annual Education Forum is reflective of the hard work and dedication of many people, from participants and committee members to the board and staff. The Education Committee’s main responsibility for the forum is to determine the educational content of the sessions offered. This involves setting the guidelines, format, and criteria of the call for proposals; reviewing and selecting the submissions; and setting the schedule of the presentations. In addition, the committee oversees the retreats, provides feedback and suggestions for the overall forum structure and program, and oversees and evaluates the educational sessions during the meeting.
In April 2007, the first face-to-face Education Committee meeting of the year took place at the national office. Its goal was to take a long hard look at recent forums and the participant feedback from the forum surveys and to consider what enhancements could be made. The committee first set out to review and revise the proposal guidelines, session formats, and submission and evaluation criteria. We wanted to make the submission process clearer and easier to comply with, as well as raise the quality of submission content. For example, a minimum of five references specific to the topic of the proposal are now required. We also introduced a new format — the Spotlight Presentation — and redefined the parameters for panel discussions. Our goal was to explore ways to encourage, support, and provide those in PA education with an opportunity to present scholarly work and to move PAEA forward as leaders in medical education.
We also looked at the retreats, which over the years have struggled to provide an even balance of structure and freedom for those who attend them, and we introduced some minor changes in these areas. The concern about whether we provide enough content for those who deal primarily with the clinical phase of the educational process was addressed by offering a clinical coordinators presentation series. Last, we also decided to create a subcommittee of PAEA members to assist the full Education Committee during the forum with facilitation, moderation, and evaluation of the sessions. The changes that emerged from the April meeting were put in place for the Tucson Forum.
To our surprise, we received the highest ever number of submissions, at 130. The 2005 Forum in Puerto Rico was the next closest, with 119. The submission review process remained the same with multiple reviewers (a minimum of three) per proposal. Each proposal was evaluated against the standardized, point-assigned, new criteria. The review process was fully blinded until the final decisions were made. In the past, accepted proposals usually scored at least 4.0 out of 5.0; however, for the Tucson Forum, the average score of the accepted proposals was 4.3. The new format of Spotlight Presentation had the highest number of submissions at 47, followed by 37 workshops and 20 roundtable submissions.
The preliminary results from the forum evaluations (51% response rate) have been very favorable, with 95% of respondents rating the overall forum as excellent (52%) or good (43%), up from 89% (39% excellent, 50% good) for the 2006 Forum in Quebec. In addition, 67% indicated a “very interested” rating for the educational topics offered. We also asked those who submitted proposals to rate the submission process, and 90% of you rated it as excellent or good; 90% also rated the presentation format options as excellent or good.
In response to the changes in the retreats, the results were varied. Some retreats reported a favorable response to the changes while other did not. Of concern is the overall low attendance at these events.
While we are pleased that the preliminary results of the survey indicate overall success, the Education Committee is looking forward to its March meeting when it will take a very detailed view of the survey data as the committee plans for the 2008 meeting.
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