Remediation in Medical Education: A Mid-Course Correction

On a daily basis, health professions educators struggle to find effective and respectful ways of working with trainees who struggle to meet standards – most of whom will become practicing clinicians. Society allows and expects the health professions to regulate ourselves, and we must do so.  

The first edition of this book concentrated on medical student learners mainly in the United States. Since then, the literature has exploded, offering a wider range of remediation practices for all levels of learners in all health professions throughout the world. This new edition continues to offer evidence-based, theory-informed, and pragmatic approaches to identifying and remediating trainees who cannot yet perform to standards. Illustrative case studies frame practical and programmatic advice from experienced front-line educators. All original chapters have been updated, and there are 21 brand new chapters. Of the 73 chapter authors, 52 are new to this edition, broadening the book’s relevance internationally and across the health professions. This book is required reading for all those committed to ensuring health professionals are ready and able to serve the health of the public.

Adina Kalet, MD, MPH, is the Stephen and Shelagh Roell Endowed Chair and Director of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Prior to this she spent 32 years at New York University School of Medicine ending as a tenured Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Co-Director of the Program on Medical Education Innovation and Research (PrMEIR). The mission of PrMEIR is to advance medical education scholarship and to institute best practices for patient-centered, evidence-based medical education. She led the Research on Medical Education Outcomes (ROMEO) unit of PrMEIR, as part of the Section of Primary Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, and Department of Medicine. ROMEO is a group of dedicated cross-disciplinary researchers seeking to link education and health services research methodology to study how educational interventions lead to long-term outcomes in learners and patients. For the past 10 years Dr. Kalet has directed the NYU Clinical Translational Science Institute Translational Research Education and Careers Mentor Development Program (NYU CTSI TREC MDP), which prepared 15-20 researchers annually for their role in mentoring translational research. She has held the Arnold P. Gold Professor of Humanism and Professionalism, practiced and taught primary care medicine in the urban inner city, has been the PI or program director on a number of cross-disciplinary and multi-institutional curriculum development and research grants. Dr. Kalet has written extensively on issues of clinical skills evaluation and remediation, faculty development and mentoring, professional identity development assessment and psychosocial aspects of medicine. She has been primary mentor on federal Career Development Awards, numerous Master’s Theses and countless mentoring committees. In 2012-2013 she took a sabbatical during which she wrote a book entitled Remediation in Medical Education: A Midcourse Correction (Springer).  In this book she brought relevant theory and practice from multiple scholarly domains to bear on the challenges of ensuring health professional trainees are fully competent to practice medicine. Dr. Kalet splits her time between her new home in Milwaukee and her long-time home in Brooklyn NY with her husband Mark and their two children (and two cats).

Calvin Chou, MD, PhD is Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, and staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in San Francisco. After undergraduate work at Yale, he received his PhD in microbiology and his MD at Columbia University, and subsequently completed residency training in internal medicine at UCSF.  As Senior Faculty Advisor for External Education with the Academy of Communication in Healthcare, he is recognized internationally for leading workshops in relationship-centered communication, feedback, conflict, and remediation in health professions education. Currently he is director of VALOR, a longitudinal program based at the VA that emphasizes humanistic clinical skill development for medical students. He also held the first endowed Academy Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UCSF.  He has delivered communication skills curricula for providers at health systems across the country, including Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Stanford Health, New York Presbyterian, Baylor Scott & White, Wake Forest, and Texas Children’s Hospital, and internationally as well.  His research interests include assessment of curricular developments in clinical skills and clinical skills remediation, forces influencing feedback in health sciences education, and enhancing communication for interprofessional trainees.  He is co-editor of the books Remediation in Medical Education: A Midcourse Correction, and Communication Rx: Transforming Healthcare Through Relationship-Centered Communication.