Dr. McGaghie is Professor of Medical Education and Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois where he served from 1992 to 2012, returning in 2015. He has previously held faculty positions at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago (1974 to 1978), the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (1978 to 1992), and the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (2013 to 2015).
Dr. McGaghie’s research and writing in medical education and preventive medicine ranges widely covering such topics as personnel and program evaluation, research methodology, medical simulation, attitude measurement, medical student selection, concept mapping, curriculum development, faculty development, standardized patients, and geriatrics. He serves on the editorial boards of five scholarly journals: Medical Teacher, Advances in Health Sciences Education, Advances in Simulation, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, and Simulation in Healthcare. Dr. McGaghie served on the Research Advisory Committee for Academic Medicine (1999 to 2001) and reviews manuscripts for many other scholarly journals including the Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, Medical Education, and The American Statistician.
He has been awarded research and training grants from a variety of NIH Institutes (e.g., NHLBI, NIA) and eight private foundations (e.g., Josiah C. Macy, Jr., Foundation, Charles E. Culpeper Foundation). McGaghie has served on several National Institutes of Health and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Study Sections (NHLBI, NIA, HUD) and as a grant application referee for several private foundations including the NBME Stemmler Fund and the Spencer Foundation.
He has served as a consultant to a variety of professional organizations, e.g., the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Physical Therapy Association and to universities and medical schools worldwide.
Dr. McGaghie has authored or edited nine books including two recent edited volumes, International Best Practices for Evaluation in the Health Professions (London: Radcliffe Publishing, Ltd. [now Taylor and Francis], 2013); and [with Louis N. Pangaro], Handbook on Medical Student Evaluation and Assessment (North Syracuse, NY: Gegensatz Press, 2015). McGaghie has published over 300 journal articles, textbook chapters, and book reviews in health professions education, simulation-based education, preventive medicine, and related fields. Recent journal articles include [with SB Issenberg, JH Barsuk, and DB Wayne] A critical review of simulation-based medical education with translational outcomes. Medical Education 2014; 48: 375-385; Varieties of integrative scholarship: why rules of evidence, criteria, and standards matter. Academic Medicine 2015; 90: 294-302; and guest editor for a thematic cluster of nine articles on mastery learning in medical education for the November 2015 issue of Academic Medicine.
Dr. McGaghie’s latest national and international (Europe, South Korea) speaking engagements have addressed “Medical education research as translational science,” the evidence-based argument that powerful simulation-based educational programs with mastery learning can produce significant downstream results in terms of better patient care practices and patient outcomes.