ReviewAdvances in medical education and practice2024
Benefits and Drawbacks of International Medical Elective Databases in Abroad Elective Research: A Narrative Review.
Review in Advances in medical education and practice, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Estimating COFuture healthcare journal · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: International medical electives (IMEs) are considered high-impact practice in global health education. Nevertheless, international medical elective (IME) research remains scarce, with only a few new publications appearing each year. The discrepancy between the many unanswered questions regarding IMEs and the lack of opportunities to perform research in this field has been further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Elective databases cataloguing structured IME reports/testimonies could offer a viable solution here. This narrative review provides a balanced and objective evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of elective databases, summarizing their potential usefulness in IME research. Methods: The methodology employed was a multidisciplinary narrative review of the published and grey literature on databases cataloguing IME testimonies. Results: Elective databases offer numerous benefits to the IME researcher. Their size allows for large analyses, built on hundreds of equally structured elective testimonies. Pre-defined outcomes, such as the elective destination, elective discipline or duration, are queried in a standardized way, allowing for a broad set of research questions. Elective databases are usually open-access, not confined to a single university, and free to use. Most databases also offer user-friendly filter functions, permitting targeted analyses centered around a particular outcome. A major drawback is that reports are rarely verified. Subject to several forms of bias (eg, recall and reporting bias), elective databases may not be suitable for all types of research questions, and the report quality is often inhomogeneous. Above all, they rarely allow for an informational depth that may result from qualitative face-to-face interviews. Conclusion: Elective databases could be a valuable supplement to interview-based elective research, potentially allowing for larger and broader analyses not confined to single institutions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.