Making group work, work in health professional education - findings from a scoping review

Well-functioning groups are critical in the health professions because learning to communicate and work in teams is fundamental for future professional practice. Additionally, the growing emphasis on relational pedagogy in a rapidly evolving higher education landscape- marked by shifts in student characteristics and the increasing prevalence of online learning, especially in the post-COVID era - introduced new challenges to the development of the 'soft' skills required of health professionals. This article reports the results of a scoping review to map the range and nature of evidence on effective group work in undergraduate health professional education to identify knowledge gaps and guide future research.

Following a methodological framework for scoping reviews, we searched EMBASE (Ovid), ERIC via ProQuest, PubMed, JSTOR, Education Research Complete, and CINAHL via EBSCOhost databases using keywords related to group work and health professional education for studies published between 2014 and 2025. Of the 5971 primary studies identified, 30 were included for review. We undertook a thematic analysis of the included studies.

Analysis of the included studies identified four main themes that support effective group work: 'role of the facilitator', 'group design', 'pedagogic and professional socialisation of students', and 'educational and assessment design'.

Contrary to the common educational belief that group work is primarily about what students do, our literature review suggests that the teacher and facilitation play a crucial role in ensuring that groups function effectively. Learning to work in groups is not something that comes naturally to students; rather, it needs to be intentionally cultivated, planned, designed, and implemented by educators and curriculum developers throughout a professional programme. In the health professions, group work is one mechanism to socialise working with others and, when intentionally cultivated, may function as a pedagogy that helps students to become better members of healthcare teams and practitioners.