Exploring “Talent” in Medical Education: A Scoping Review

Background: The term 'talent' appears in health professions education (HPE) but is variably defined and often conflated with performance proxies. Through a scoping review, the authors sought to map how 'talent' and related terms are used/defined in medical education across stages and use cases. Methods: A scoping review (Arksey-O'Malley; Levac; PRISMA-ScR) with descriptive mapping and content analysis of charted items was performed. The search was conducted across OVID-Medline, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, focusing on studies related to talent in medical education from 1946 to May 20, 2024. The authors included not only the term talent but also broadened the review to include adjacent concepts, such as aptitude and giftedness. Two reviewers independently assessed titles, abstracts and full texts using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. A third reviewer resolved screening discrepancies. Relevant concepts were mapped for reporting, and a content analysis identified research gaps, trends, and patterns across global, regional and specialty contexts. The papers were tiered into two groups: Tier 1, directly mentioning the term talent; Tier 2, adjacent terms often related to talent. Findings: The authors reviewed 189 studies loosely related to talent in medical education: 47 (25%) were Tier 1 papers that directly mentioned talent, and 142 (75%) were Tier 2 (adjacent terms). The literature primarily originated from North America (41%, 77/189) and Europe (30%, 56/189) Most papers focused on identifying individuals with high potential (74%, 141/189), particularly in medical school selection, while less attention was given to themes like retention, equity and leadership. Conclusion: Although 47 papers contained the term "talent", there was a paucity of papers that defined talent within medical education or applied a framework/theory. Interdisciplinary research may be a way to better introduce this concept to our field.