Looking beyond the individual: Quality research requires supportive environments

This issue of Medical Teacher includes an article by ten Cate and colleagues which focuses on defining excellence in health professions education PhD dissertations. The authors point out that PhD programs in health professions education (HPE) are becoming increasingly popular yet they argue that excellence in PhD dissertations has not been well defined. Thus, their article proposes generic criteria by which to evaluate the excellence of individual PhD dissertations, including, for example, coherence, relevance, validity, style, communicative power and ethics.