Ronald Harden (United Kingdom)

Professor Ronald Harden graduated from medical school in Glasgow, UK. He completed training and practised as an endocrinologist before moving to full-time medical education. He is Professor of Medical Education (Emeritus) University of Dundee. He was formerly General Secretary and Treasurer of the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE), Editor of Medical Teacher, and Teaching Dean & Director of the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Dundee.

He is committed to promoting excellence in medical education through the development of new approaches to curriculum planning, assessment and to teaching and learning. Ideas which he has pioneered include the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) which has been universally adopted as a standard approach to assessment of clinical competence, the spiral curriculum and the SPICES model for curriculum planning and models for outcome-based education. He has published more than 400 papers in leading journals. He is co-editor of A Practical Guide for Medical Teachers and the Routledge International Handbook of Medical Education and co-author of Essential Skills for a Medical Teacher, The Definitive Guide to the OSCE, Eight Roles of the Medical Teacher and The Changing Role of Medical Students.

His contributions to excellence in medical education have attracted numerous awards including the Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education in 2006, which has been equated to the Nobel Prize for medical education. He was awarded the OBE for his services to medical education by Queen Elizabeth in 2003. He was presented with the Gusi Peace Prize for services to medical education at a ceremony in Manila in 2017. He also received the Cura Personalis from the University of Georgetown in 2013. He has received several honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the President of the National University of Singapore during the Asia-Pacific Medical Education Conference (APMEC) in May 2023. In October 2023 he received the Peter Dieter Leadership Award from the Association of Medical Schools in Europe (AMSE). In August 2024 he was the first recipient of the AMFEM (Association for Medical Education, Mexico) Annual Ronald Harden Award for Excellence in Medical Education. He also received an inaugural ICBE Collaborators Award for contributions to the development and implementation of CBE worldwide.