SynthesisMedical education2019
Cost evaluations in health professions education: a systematic review of methods and reporting quality.
Synthesis in Medical education, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Costs and economic impact of student-led clinics-A systematic review.Medical education · 2025Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Methods of teaching evidence-based practice: a systematic review.BMC medical education · 2022Pooled it
- Quality of cost evaluations of physician continuous professional development: Systematic review of reporting and methods.Perspectives on medical education · 2022Pooled it
- Cost-effectiveness and Economic Benefit of Continuous Professional Development for Drug Prescribing: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2022Pooled it
- Where do we invest money to implement active learning on caries detection? An economic evaluation.Brazilian oral research · 2024Trial
- A call to unify cost and economic impact research of health professions education.Medical education · 2025Article
- Effective factors in planning, implementation, and management of educational program evaluation in medical sciences: A practical guide.Journal of education and health promotion · 2024Article
- Article
- Technology-enhanced simulation in emergency medicine: Updated systematic review and meta-analysis 1991-2021.AEM education and training · 2023Article
- Wrestling with the bottom line in medical education.Medical education · 2022Article
- Economic evaluation of CPD activities for healthcare professionals: A scoping review.Medical education · 2022Article
- Article
- Effects of Covid-19: The Need to Assess the Real Value of Anatomy Education.Anatomical sciences education · 2021Article
- The Financial Cost of Interprofessional Ambulatory Training: What's the Bottom Line?Journal of graduate medical education · 2021Article
- Stratification of Health Professional Education and Its Funding Disparities: Evidence From China During the Period of 1998-2017.Frontiers in public health · 2021Article
- "You can't always get what you want…": economic thinking, constrained optimization and health professions education.Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice · 2020Article
- Increasing value in research: cost evaluations in health professions education.Medical education · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
contextHigh-quality research into education costs can inform better decision making. Improvements to cost research can be guided by information about the research questions, methods and reporting of studies evaluating costs in health professions education (HPE). Our objective was to appraise the overall state of the field and evaluate temporal trends in the methods and reporting quality of cost evaluations in HPE research.
methodsWe searched the MEDLINE, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), EMBASE, Business Source Complete and ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre) databases on 31 July 2017. To evaluate trends over time, we sampled research reports at 5-year intervals (2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016). All original research studies in HPE that reported a cost outcome were included. The Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI) and the BMJ economic checklist were used to appraise methodological and reporting quality, respectively. Trends in quality over time were analysed.
resultsA total of 78 studies were included, of which 16 were published in 2001, 15 in 2006, 20 in 2011 and 27 in 2016. The region most commonly represented was the USA (n = 43). The profession most commonly referred to was that of the physician (n = 46). The mean ± standard deviation (SD) MERSQI score was 10.9 ± 2.6 out of 18, with no significant change over time (p = 0.55). The mean ± SD BMJ score was 13.5 ± 7.1 out of 35, with no significant change over time (p = 0.39). A total of 49 (63%) studies stated a cost-related research question, 23 (29%) stated the type of cost evaluation used, and 31 (40%) described the method of estimating resource quantities and unit costs. A total of 16 studies compared two or more interventions and reported both cost and learning outcomes.
conclusionsThe absolute number of cost evaluations in HPE is increasing. However, there are shortcomings in the quality of methodology and reporting, and these are not improving over time.
Indexed as
Identifiers
31402515What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.