<![CDATA[AI × MedEd]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XUtj!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fecbf160b-deb3-47ba-b379-5de94f7e34ff_400x400.pngAI × MedEdhttps://newsletter.aomalley.comSubstackFri, 13 Nov 2026 03:14:24 GMT<![CDATA[Prompting is a teachable skill]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/prompting-is-a-teachable-skillhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/prompting-is-a-teachable-skillMon, 26 Oct 2026 08:18:35 GMT

This Week in MedEd

12 open funding calls, 70 upcoming events, 38 live jobs (5 new, 4 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 NIH Research Education Program: Mentoring Activities & Networks (up to $500,000 from the US National Institutes of Health, for US institutions, standing deadline to May 2029)

  • 🎓 AIMEC 2027, the 3rd International Conference on AI in Medical Education (Kuala Lumpur, 16-18 Apr 2027)

  • 💼 Executive Director of Education and Training, Innovation and AI (Medical Council, Ireland, open now)

The full list, with deadlines, links and eligibility, is one tap away. Try everything free for 30 days.

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Most of us have now watched a colleague type a one-line question into a chatbot, squint at the answer, and decide the tool is either magic or useless. What we see far less often is anyone asking whether the person typing was ever taught how to ask. We run workshops on how to give feedback and how to write a good multiple choice question, yet we tend to treat prompting as something people will simply pick up.

This week I am looking at three papers that treat prompting as a skill that can be designed, taught and tested. Two of them put students through structured instruction and compare them with students left to their own devices, and the third shows how an examiner can build a better prompt, layer by layer, when writing high-stakes exam questions.

If you want to learn more about prompting, I would recommend my paper on PDSA prompting1, and my previous post on Prompt Engineering:

Key points:

  • Students who were taught to prompt, verify and integrate AI output did better on knowledge and clinical reasoning tests than students given the same tool with minimal guidance.

  • Without instruction, students tended to fire the question at the AI and keep rephrasing it, whereas taught students identified their knowledge gaps and broke the task down first. That difference did not fade as students became more familiar with the tool.

  • Effects on test scores were real but modest, and both student studies were single-institution, so treat them as strong signals rather than settled evidence.

  • For examiners, prompt design behaves like item writing: context, structure, examples and a request for rationales all change what you get back, and expert review is still non-negotiable.

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]]><![CDATA[The feedback nobody has time to give]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-feedback-nobody-has-time-to-givehttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-feedback-nobody-has-time-to-giveMon, 19 Oct 2026 07:13:31 GMT

This Week in MedEd

13 open funding calls, 73 upcoming events, 43 live jobs (3 new, 9 closing this week), including:

💰 Research in Education Grant (up to $100,000 from FAER and the American Board of Anesthesiology, for US anesthesiology faculty, deadline 15 Feb 2027)

🎓 AMEE 2027 (Helsinki, 28 Aug to 1 Sep 2027)

💼 Associate Professor in Digital Health, Artificial Intelligence and Society (Trinity College Dublin School of Medicine, closes 12 Nov 2026)

The full database, with deadlines, links and eligibility, free for 30 days:

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One thing we are always trying to do better is give students more frequent, valuable and actionable feedback. This is often driven by the evaluations that students complete about our teaching; in the UK this is the National Student Survey, where, across the sector, measurements relating to feedback are stubbornly low1.

NSS 2026, positivity measure %

In medical education specifically, we know that observation and feedback drive the development of competence, and we also know that the observation is usually fleeting, the note is usually thin, and the report that was supposed to teach someone something

gets a tick and a “good work” because the next patient is waiting. Feedback is the part of teaching that is most valued and most routinely under-supplied. This week I am looking at four papers that ask whether AI can take some of that load.

Key points:

  • A systematic review found only 7 studies of LLM feedback in imaging education, all in radiology residents, with gains in report quality and discrepancy detection but no robust evidence yet of educational effectiveness.

  • LLM feedback was most reliable on standardised tasks and weakest on interpretive ones, and fine-tuned models generally beat general-purpose chatbots.

  • Educators without programming skills can build a comment-based, iterative feedback system from three off-the-shelf tools, but the quality of the feedback is untested.

  • An ambient AI handoff assistant produced about 3.6 errors per note, and trainees said spotting those errors was part of what they learned.

  • An AI coaching agent promoted self-reflection but felt formulaic, shallow in its empathy and unable to move conversations forward.

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]]><![CDATA[Agreement is not validity]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/agreement-is-not-validityhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/agreement-is-not-validityMon, 05 Oct 2026 07:29:10 GMT

This Week in MedEd

20 open funding calls, 70 upcoming events, 72 live jobs (44 new, 15 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 Advanced Digital Skills for AI Uptake in Health (up to €3.9M from the European Commission’s Digital Europe Programme, deadline 1 Oct 2026)

  • 🎓 Stanford AI+HEALTH 2026 (online, 8-9 Dec 2026, abstracts due 15 Oct)

  • 💼 Head of School of Clinic…

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]]><![CDATA[Better than nothing, or better than us?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/better-than-nothing-or-better-thanhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/better-than-nothing-or-better-thanMon, 28 Sep 2026 07:37:32 GMT

This Week in MedEd

16 open funding calls, 57 upcoming events, 60 live jobs (21 new, 11 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 Digital Skills and Jobs Platform: National Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs (up to €2M from the European Commission’s Digital Europe Programme, deadline 1 Oct 2026)

  • 🎓 2027 AAMC Medical Education Innovation Conference (Indianapolis…

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]]><![CDATA[Can AI play the patient?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/can-ai-play-the-patienthttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/can-ai-play-the-patientMon, 14 Sep 2026 14:47:03 GMT

This Week in MedEd

9 open funding calls, 40 upcoming events, 47 live jobs (22 new, 15 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 Medical Student Education Program (up to $1.625M from the US Health Resources and Services Administration, deadline 1 Sep 2026)

  • 🎓 AI in the Global Classroom: Between Innovation and Inequity (ASME MEGAbite, online, 9 Sep 2026)

  • 💼 Faculty O…

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]]><![CDATA[What AI does to the doctor's mind]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/what-ai-does-to-the-doctors-mindhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/what-ai-does-to-the-doctors-mindMon, 31 Aug 2026 10:29:07 GMT

This Week in MedEd

You may have noticed that there was no newsletter last week. I completely forgot to post anything because I was enjoying AMEE 2026 in Vienna! However, I have continued tracking opportunities, including 9 open funding calls, 35 upcoming events, 34 live jobs (11 new, 9 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 Connecting Champions for Diversity, …

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]]><![CDATA[The AI gap isn't about enthusiasm]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-ai-gap-isnt-about-enthusiasmhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-ai-gap-isnt-about-enthusiasmMon, 17 Aug 2026 08:46:25 GMT

This Week in MedEd

7 open funding calls, 31 upcoming events, 37 live jobs (18 new, 7 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 Advanced Digital Skills for AI Uptake in Health (up to €3.9M from the European Commission’s Digital Europe Programme, deadline 1 Oct 2026)

  • 🎓 AMEE 2026 (Vienna, Austria, 22-26 Aug 2026)

  • 💼 Assistant Professor in Fair and Responsible AI (Imp…

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]]><![CDATA[Is Anyone Training the Trainers?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/is-anyone-training-the-trainershttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/is-anyone-training-the-trainersMon, 10 Aug 2026 21:02:14 GMT

This Week in MedEd

7 open funding calls, 24 upcoming events, 27 live jobs (15 new, 5 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 EdTech Accelerator (up to €2.7M for European EdTech startups and SMEs, deadline 1 Oct 2026)

  • 🎓 IAMSE 2026 Virtual Forum (online, global, 20-22 Oct 2026)

  • 💼 Professor: AI & Health (University of Johannesburg, closes 9 Aug)

The full list, with…

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]]><![CDATA[How much MedEd AI research is actually happening?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/how-much-meded-ai-research-actuallyhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/how-much-meded-ai-research-actuallyTue, 04 Aug 2026 09:18:07 GMT

This Week in MedEd

1 new event, 23 jobs (including 8 new and 2 closing this week), including:

  • 💰 Advanced Digital Skills for AI Uptake in Health — up to €3.9M, EU consortia, deadline 1 Oct 2026

  • 🎓 EBMA 2026: Annual European Conference on Assessment in Medical Education — Lancaster, UK, 1–3 Dec 2026

  • 💼 Associate Dean of Digital Education — BIMM University, L…

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]]><![CDATA[How I use AI in AI × MedEd]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/how-i-use-ai-in-ai-mededhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/how-i-use-ai-in-ai-mededThu, 30 Jul 2026 09:06:11 GMTLast week Substack took the controversial step of adding AI detection into its user interface. I can see why they did this. They are seeking to deter AI slop from filling their platform and reward writers that produce high-quality original content. But things are never that simple…

The Substack Post
Against Claudefishing
It’s getting harder to tell what’s real on the internet…
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4 months ago · 6461 likes · 1476 comments · Chris Best

False Positives

We have all seen instances of false positive results, when…

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]]><![CDATA[Does AI actually teach better?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/does-ai-actually-teach-betterhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/does-ai-actually-teach-betterMon, 27 Jul 2026 07:56:45 GMT

This Week in MedEd

3 new funding calls, 2 new events, 21 jobs (including 6 new and 3 close this week)

⭐ Closes Today: University of Buckingham is hiring a Senior Lecturer, MLA Lead (Clinical), to lead its Medical Licensing Assessment programme.

The full database, with deadlines, links and eligibility, free for 30 days:

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]]><![CDATA[Can AI write the exam?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/can-ai-write-the-examhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/can-ai-write-the-examMon, 20 Jul 2026 06:43:20 GMT

Most of the debate about AI in medical education has been about learning: how students revise, how we teach, whether a chatbot helps or hinders. Assessment has had less attention, which is odd, because assessment is where the stakes are highest. A wrong answer in a revision session is a teaching moment. A flawed item in a licensing exam is a fairness pr…

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]]><![CDATA[One year of AI × MedEd]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/one-year-of-ai-mededhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/one-year-of-ai-mededThu, 16 Jul 2026 12:44:11 GMTA year ago I published the first issue of this newsletter. I wasn’t sure anyone would read it: the premise, writing about what other people have written about AI in Medical Education(!), felt very niche. But it turns out that this was actually the point, and one year on, there is a growing community of thousands of educators who regularly turn up to see…

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]]><![CDATA[Nobody is automatically ready for AI]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/nobody-is-automatically-ready-forhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/nobody-is-automatically-ready-forMon, 13 Jul 2026 06:18:11 GMTWe tend to assume that readiness for AI will take care of itself. The current cohort of medical students has never known a world without smartphones, so surely they will absorb clinical AI the way they absorbed everything else, by osmosis and generational fluency. It is a comforting story, and this week’s papers suggest it is largely wrong. This isn’t s…

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]]><![CDATA[Will AI build clinical reasoning, or bypass it?]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/will-ai-build-clinical-reasoninghttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/will-ai-build-clinical-reasoningMon, 06 Jul 2026 07:46:03 GMTAsk a large language model a clinical question and it will hand you an answer that is fluent, confident, and often correct. That is exactly what worries me. Medical education has never really been about producing the right answer on demand. It is about building the reasoning that lets a doctor reach the right answer when the tool is wrong, unavailable, …

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]]><![CDATA[Students are ready. The curriculum isn't.]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/students-are-ready-the-curriculumhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/students-are-ready-the-curriculumMon, 29 Jun 2026 07:34:31 GMT

A note before we begin: I wanted to flag the 2026 Edward J. Stemmler M.D. Medical Education Research Grant Program, which supports the research and development of innovative assessment approaches with the potential to advance assessment in medical education. The grant ceiling is $150K. If you want to apply for this grant you have to submit your Letter o…

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]]><![CDATA[Stop bolting AI on. Start redesigning.]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/stop-bolting-ai-on-start-redesigninghttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/stop-bolting-ai-on-start-redesigningMon, 22 Jun 2026 07:11:08 GMT

Summer is well and truly here in Scotland, and I am looking forward to conference season. I will be attending AMEE in Vienna 🇦🇹 this year to present some exciting work on SimPatient. Please reply to this email if you’re going — it would be great to meet up.

I am also currently tracking 20 international Medical Education conferences and over £250K worth…

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]]><![CDATA[The readiness gap that follows you through a career]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-readiness-gap-that-follows-youhttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-readiness-gap-that-follows-youMon, 15 Jun 2026 07:37:39 GMTIf the early years of generative AI in medical education were about access (could our students even get their hands on these tools?) and then about permission (should we ‘let’ them?), 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the readiness reckoning. The question has shifted from whether our learners and colleagues will use AI to whether any of us are genuin…

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]]><![CDATA[What we know about what trainees know]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/what-we-know-about-what-traineeshttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/what-we-know-about-what-traineesMon, 08 Jun 2026 09:26:26 GMT

Hello everyone!

Many of you will remember that academics used to have something called ‘summer’, which was a break between academic years when we could planning, think and write about things that we didn’t have time to do during periods of busy teaching. Most of us don’t have much of a summer any more. In my University, assessments run later into June, a…

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]]><![CDATA[From if to how: three blueprints for an AI-ready medical education]]>https://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-scaffolding-is-finally-goinghttps://newsletter.aomalley.com/p/the-scaffolding-is-finally-goingMon, 01 Jun 2026 21:05:00 GMT

Hello everyone.

Before we get started on this week’s roundup, a couple of updates:

I wanted to take a moment to welcome a flurry of new subscribers to this newsletter, which is now routinely read by 7500 people per month from 70 different countries. If you have colleagues who would be interested in this newsletter please share it with them:

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