Using ‘complexity’ for improving educational research in health care

Systematic reviews of health care education have consistently reported a lack of long-term effects, failure to use theory, and inadequate methodological rigour. Such findings have highlighted the lack of a clear causality and predictability in health care education research and therefore the inadequacy of a traditional scientific framework with its focus on analysis, prediction and control. This article argues that in order to develop an effective and standardised framework we must go beyond such a restrictive agenda and toward one that appreciates education as a complex adaptive system. It uses the example of interprofessional education in the UK to showcase its discussion.