The tough choices involved in daily medical practice demand more than scientific knowledge and technical skills.  They involve learning the skills and character traits needed to help patients and their families make difficult decisions.  They involve learning how to work well with colleagues on the daily choices made by interdisciplinary teams.  Practitioners need the will and capacity to do good listening and good talking, to empathize, to counsel, to deal with uncertainty, to balance empathy with detachment, to be resilient, to be imaginative, to be reflective and to deliberate. So how do you design medical institutions and medical education to develop wise practitioners capable of making the myriad of difficult choices that everyday care  and teamwork demand?  One example discussed in Ken’s book Practical Wisdom the re-design of the third-year clerkship program for Harvard Medical students at the Cambridge Health Alliance (pp. 255-268).  In his talk Ken will present three other cases: one about an ICU nursing unit, one about an inner-city health clinic and one about a program in a major medical center nearby that provides palliative care.  These success stories will help us reflect on what can actually be done to design learning environments for practical wisdom in health care.

Join Prof. Elizabeth Carpenter-Song and Dr. Manish K. Mishra along with Drs. Amber Barnato & Kathryn Kirkland in a discussion with Kenneth Sharpe about his book Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do The Right Thing.

Register here:  dartgo.org/e57mar21