A Concise Framework for Medical Education Terminology

Abstract

Human performance improvement (HPI) is a discipline that combines the ‘efficiency expert’ role with Education and Training intervention design. HPI's goal is to design the most efficient and effective intervention to improve performance or establish a performance standard. It has evolved since the early 1900s. This discipline has a history of confusion as it relates to the definitions of a plethora of terms. This confusion of terms is not limited to HPI, as disciplines like communications and organizational change management have their own terminology confusion. Because medical education interventions could span several kinds of interventions, it is very important to understand various terms across these disciplines, systematically, instead of within disciplines. This paper explains how various analyses should be combined into a single analysis and then delineates terminology for various interventions as a holistic system, instead of as defining these as individual terms. This joint analysis and holistic system of intervention terminology provides a concise novel framework for medical education efforts.