Last February, I was honored to be participating in the APMEC and ICFDHP meeting in Singapore. The APMEC meeting (Asian Pacific Medical Education Conference) is an annual meeting initiated by the National University of Singapore, and it typically attracts about 800 participants from the region and the rest of the world. This year, the meeting was combined with the ICFDHP meeting (International Conference on Faculty Development in the Health Professions) which resulted in an attendance of over 1100 participants in total. One of the major messages of this meeting was how important faculty development is for medical education. Ronald Harden (UK) showed the audience that excellent educators are crucial in developing a high-quality curriculum. Training in education has to be a requirement in every school, and needs to be personalized and tailored to the needs of the individual educator. Teachers have to accept responsibility for their own personal development as an educator by exploring resources to enhance excellence. And finally, the schools should recognize teaching activities by promotion and awards to reflect the high priority of this topic.

Consequently, much effort should be given to faculty development programs to improve the didactical competencies of teaching staff. As you all know, IAMSE focuses on this area of faculty development. As a society organized and directed by medical faculty members, its goal is to provide teachers opportunities to enhance their excellence in teaching, such as the fellowship program, web seminars, manuals, the annual meeting, and of course Medical Science Educator. The goal of our journal is to publish quality papers from an international authorship that are of interest to all who teach the sciences in healthcare education. This helps to provide the educator access to the most current information and skills needed to excel as a teacher.

As the Editor-in-Chief of this great journal, I can only strongly support Harden’s appeal to the educational society to invest in faculty development of our educators. I therefore hope that you will enjoy this journal issue and that it will offer you exciting resources to enhance your personal excellence in teaching. Of course you are always welcome to share as an author your own scholarly work for the benefit and development of others!

Peter G.M. de Jong, PhD

Editor-in-Chief