Health professions education and globalization: a call for reflexivity

We seem to be subject to an ever more strident globalization discourse. Leaders, political parties, countries, and international organizations increasingly work to create an identity that is either strongly aligned with or against globalization. In the context of such discursive ferment, health professions education cannot escape the conversation. And yet, a read of our literature reflects more confusion than clarity. Only seven years ago, my colleagues and I conducted a review of the literature on globalization in medical education and found next to nothing to report. Concerns abounded, of course: the nefarious effects of students going abroad unsupervised, exporting culturally inappropriate teaching, and poaching health professionals from low income countries under the guise of international education. But those concerns were largely imported from other fields and sprinkled atop a medical education field that had, as yet, scarcely engaged with the issues.