Back to the future: The Clinical Teacher (TCT) 20 years on …

In 2024, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Clinical Teacher (TCT). Established in 2004 by the Association of the Study of Medical Education (ASME)¹ and Wiley,² and first edited by Professor John Bligh, TCT was designed as a platform to explore ‘the practical issues clinical teachers face in their day to day work’.³ Fast-forward, and this aim has certainly stood the test of time. The lay of the land in clinical education continues to change as the needs of adult learners shift and health care delivery evolves, bringing many new challenges and exciting opportunities.

Over the past 20 years, the health professions education field has changed immeasurably across the world with the ever-increasing numbers of university programmes, education roles and service learning placements. Technological shifts, regulatory reforms and changing patient demographic needs have also revisioned the pedagogic approaches which shape our field. Across 2020 and 2021, editors Professor Jill Thistlethwaite and Dr Aileen Barrett navigated the journal through the Covid-19 pandemic, where clinical teaching rapidly adapted to meet the needs of social distancing requirements in a changing health workforce, fostering innovation. Although online learning was already well accepted across the health professions as a means to increase knowledge,⁴ its effectiveness in skills development had been less explored.

As co-editors, we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to look back at what has been co-created over time. Many of the subject areas published in the first volume remain topical. For example, ‘Teaching Anatomy without cadavers’⁵ remains a contemporary issue within the modern medical curricula. Once a long-held method of learning in anatomy, whole-body dissection has largely been replaced by cost and time-efficient teaching methods but with little agreement on what works best.⁶ In the first volume of TCT, problem-based learning (PBL) was discussed as a relatively new form of student learning.⁷ Although PBL remains popular, still present in many medical schools, a new contender is team-based learning (TBL). Having gained popularity across the health professions, TBL is seen as a resource efficient strategy among large student cohorts to foster knowledge recall, small group collaboration, large group discussions and feedback.^8-10 Interprofessional Education (IPE) gained much attention over the years,11-14 and both TBL and IPE have emerged as important student-centred pedagogical approaches to prepare health professional students for practice, where a collaborative team environment for patient care is essential.

TCT has a long history of supporting researchers, nurturing educational leaders and the development of educators through various activities overseen by former editors. Those who have served as TCT editorsinclude the following: John Bligh (volumes 1–2), John Spencer (volumes 3–6), Steve Trumble (volumes 8–10), Jill Thistlethwaite (volumes 11–17) and Aileen Barrett (volumes 18–20). We invited those who have gone before us to reflect on the journal's achievements, challenges, and future direction, and we look forward to sharing these commentaries across the 20th anniversary volume.

Clinical education research is gaining momentum and recognition, with many different ways to get involved and take on leadership roles. Many of us enter this field serendipitously—it provides a meaningful way to connect with others across the university and healthcare sectors locally and internationally and across the health professions. TCT provides a platform to build social capital in clinical education research—an area of importance to students, trainees, educational designers, institutes and society. As a journal that encourages the advancement of early career researchers, we are committed to achieving impact through collaboration in research and scholarship.

The future will bring many challenges to health professions education. Perhaps you have considered contributing toeducation research but are not sure how to get started. As health professional educators, we have a responsibility to improve the students' learning experience and share our innovations. We are relying on the expertise and creativity of the next generation to join our networks and lead the way, maintaining quality improvement in health professions education and sharing their ideas. To this end, we have built on the initiatives of previous editors.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.