Staff Profile

Dr Megan Brown is is a dynamic and creative researcher, teacher, and leader with a passion for innovative approaches, qualitative research, and theory. She has been at Newcastle University since June 2023. She obtained her PhD in Medical Education from the University of York (Hull York Medical School) in 2022, on the topic of medical student experiences of Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships.

Megan serves as an assistant editor for the journal Academic Medicine and is increasingly recognised internationally for educational research. Megan has numerous peer-reviewed outputs including books, book chapters, and journal articles, and is an experienced international conference presenter. She has been Principal or Co-investigator on several externally funded research projects, including for key health professions education regulators (e.g., the General Dental Council, General Medical Council) and policy makers (e.g., NHS-England).

Megan’s leadership experience includes holding leadership positions for national and international societies. She is a co-lead for the NIHR Clinical Education Research Incubator, where she leads cross-profession initiatives, and on the board of directors for the Association for the Study of Medical Education, where she leads strategy for the organisation’s communications as Director of Social Media and Communications.

Megan has an international profile as a qualitative health professions education researcher. She is interested in qualitative methodologies, and experienced across a wide range of approaches, including realist research, reflexive thematic analysis, phenomenological research, and grounded theory. In addition, she has been a leading voice in bringing Poetic Inquiry as a research approach to health professions education research, publishing both empirical and methods paper on this. She has a keen interest in philosophy, particularly in its application to health professions education and, in 2021, co-edited a collection of essays on this topic for Springer Publishing House ("Applied Philosophy for Health Professions Education").

In relation to topics of research, Megan has a broad range of research interests, including:

·      Equality, diversity, and inclusion within healthcare, and research, particularly in relation to disability, as a multiply disabled researcher herself

·      Workforce, and its impact on healthcare delivery

·      Educational theory

·      Empathy and identity development

What unites Megan's research across these topics is a focus on issues relating to the health professions workforce, particularly within the UK. Megan's work spans the spectrum of undergraduate and postgraduate experiences, though, of late, much of her research is at a postgraduate level.

Megan is actively developing her PPIE skillset, in recognition of the critical importance of co-production within clinical education research, especially research which is equity-focussed.

Megan is an experienced teacher, and has worked in teaching both at the level of undergraduate medical education (e.g., as a PBL tutor, and clinical skills tutor), and within postgraduate medical education (e.g., as Programme Director for an online medical education postgraduate certificate).

She is an experienced Master’s level supervisor, and, more recently, a PhD supervisor. She currently supervises two PhD students working on topics relating to inequality within medical education (e.g., gender bias within postgraduate medical training). She is open to enquiries from students looking for PhD supervisors within medical education, and can offer particular expertise on qualitative methodologies, topics relating to equity, and workforce research.

Megan is also an external examiner at the University of South Wales for their postgraduate medical education offering.