EDUCATION IN AMBULATORY SETTINGS - DEVELOPING VALID MEASURES OF EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES, AND OTHER RESEARCH PRIORITIES

Efforts to redesign education in ambulatory settings are hampered by a lack of rigorous and coherent research on the learning process in the se settings and the desired outcomes of the educational experiences; T he authors present 13 priority research topics and 51 important resear ch questions concerning education in ambulatory settings that were def ined by a distinguished group of medical educators, clinicians, and po licymakers who attended an invitational conference on education in amb ulatory settings in 1996. The need to establish valid and reliable mea sures of quality and outcomes of educational programs and instructiona l interventions stood out as the major prerequisite for conducting res earch on education in ambulatory settings. Issues of theory building, research priorities, and research design are discussed, and policy rec ommendations are made for the development of valid measures of educati onal outcomes. The creation of a ''Medical Education Outcomes Commissi on'' is proposed to act as a repository for measures and instruments, and to provide the field with mechanisms to validate instruments and u niform recommendations to-conduct studies of quality. The authors urge -funding :agencies with missions that support medical education to inv est in basic research on the outcomes of education in ambulatory setti ngs.