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Lara Varpio

Putting the House of Knowledge Synthesis in Order: Differentiating Between Eight Different Kinds of Literature Reivews

IN-PERSON ONLY

We gratefully acknowledge the Newell Trust in Health Sciences Education for providing support for this event.

Abstract:
Researchers in medical education are increasingly relying on literature reviews / knowledge syntheses—in fact, a recent bibliometric analysis revealed that the number of reviews published in core medical education journals has increased by 2620% over the last two decades (Maggio et al, 2020). The most prevalent types are systematic and scoping reviews. Unfortunately, other kinds of reviews (e.g., narrative) have often been deemed unscientific and without value in medical education. Consequently, medical education has a skewed perspective on how literature can be synthesized and why (i.e., the purposes) syntheses can be conducted. This is deeply problematic because it blinds our community to synthesis approaches that can meaningfully add new insights and knowledge to medical education. A foundational reason for the current overreliance on systematic and scoping reviews is that these types of knowledge syntheses are familiar to medical educators: scholars know the kinds of questions these reviews answer, the methods for conducting them, and the markers of rigor to be expected. I contend that medical educators would use other types of literature reviews if they were more informed about them.

After this workshop, participants will be able to:

• distinguish between 8 different types of literature reviews: systematic, scoping, realist, narrative, critical, state-of-the-art, theory integrative, and meta-ethnographic reviews
• articulate, for each type of review, the research questions they answer, how to execute them, and their markers of rigor

Bio:
Dr. Lara Varpio is Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Philadelphia and the Co-Director of Research in Medical Education at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She started these positions in 2022, after serving for 9 years at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and 6 years at the University of Ottawa, Canada..

Dr. Varpio’s research investigates how individual clinicians can shape the medical profession, and how the profession shapes individual clinicians. In that research, she uses qualitative methodologies and methods, integrated with theories from the Social Sciences and Humanities. Her most recent work is related to: the perilous myths of professional identity formation, and how the concept of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is failing medical education. She mentors many individual health professions educators from several specialties in a wide range of topics, and is internationally recognized for her expertise in qualitative research methods and methodologies, and with a wide array of different theories.

Dr. Varpio has secured over $5.7millionUSD in research grants, has authored +150 peer-reviewed conference presentations, disseminated +180 peer-reviewed publications, and given keynote talks and invited sessions at all the major medical education international conferences. Dr. Varpio was recently selected by the Fulbright Scholarship committee to mentor and host a Fulbright Scholar award winner from Australia. In 2019, she was selected as one of twelve inaugural Karolinska Fellows. She was co-host of the KeyLIME podcast, and moved with the show to the Karolinska Intitutet, and now co-hosts the PAPERs Podcast.

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Les chercheurs et chercheuses en éducation médicale ont de plus en plus recours aux méthodes de revue de la littérature et de synthèse des connaissances. En effet, une récente analyse bibliométrique a révélé que le nombre de revues parues dans les principales publications d’éducation médicale avait augmenté de 2 620 % au cours des vingt dernières années (Maggio et coll., 2020). Les deux types les plus fréquents sont la revue systématique et l’examen de la portée. Malheureusement, les autres types de revues, comme la revue narrative, sont souvent considérés comme non scientifiques et sans valeur par le milieu de l’éducation médicale. Il en résulte une vision erronée des méthodes de synthèse de la littérature (le comment) et des raisons de dresser une synthèse (le pourquoi). Cette situation pose un sérieux problème, car notre communauté ferme la porte à des approches pouvant générer un lot considérable de nouvelles connaissances. Le recours excessif à la revue systématique et à l’examen de la portée que l’on constate actuellement s’explique principalement par la familiarité des éducateurs médicaux avec ces méthodes. En effet, ils connaissent les types de questions auxquelles ces revues répondent, la façon de les réaliser ainsi que le degré de rigueur auquel ils peuvent s’attendre. S’ils étaient mieux informés sur les autres types de revues de la littérature, ils en feraient probablement usage.

Au terme de cet atelier, les participants et participantes seront en mesure de :

· distinguer huit différents types de revues de la littérature : revue systématique, examen de la portée, examen réaliste, revue narrative, examen critique, étude de l’état actuel, examen par intégration de théories et méta-ethnographie;

· décrire, pour chaque type de revue, les questions de recherche auxquelles elles répondent, la façon de les réaliser et les marqueurs de rigueur.

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