Designing for Wisdom: How doctors can be educated to have the will and the skill needed to do the right thing
Dr. Kenneth E. Sharpe
Date: Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Time: 12:00pm to 1:30pm (feel free to bring a bagged lunch)
Locations:
- DHCC 2267 (host venue)
- IRC 305
- PHRM 3321
- MSB 107
- RJH CA 120
- KGH CAC 237
- NHSC 9-374
- Surrey Central City (Manning Room 4109)
Remote:
- Movi E, ID 30215
- Additional locations and video conference options are available. Please email ches.secretary@ubc.ca to process the request.
Abstract
Despite remarkable, even dazzling advances in both diagnosis and treatment, there is a growing discontent with health care, both from patients and from clinicians themselves. In Aristotelian terms one could argue that there has been a focus on the techne, or the technical knowledge and expertise of medicine, but we have failed to develop the phronesis or practical wisdom necessary to do medicine in the best way possible. Practitioners need practical wisdom to make tough, everyday decisions in messy situations where guidelines and checklists fall short. Medicine is filled with ambiguity, with difficult choices between competing values, and with the complexity that comes with navigating the human mind, body and spirit. Rules and incentives are of limited use in getting us to act rightly and can sometimes even undermine our will and skill to do so. So how do we make these choices, and what helps us to make wise choices in these complex circumstances? In this session I will seek to explore the value of practical wisdom for every aspect of doctoring, and will suggest that practical wisdom is the uber virtue necessary for the application of all other virtues in the practice of medicine. I will examine the question of how medical practitioners learn practical wisdom and how such learning can be nurtured, arguing that institutions can be designed to foster the capacity for wise choices—just as they are currently organized to undermine and corrode this capacity.
Biography
Dr. Kenneth E. Sharpe is currently an International Visiting Research Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College where he teaches political philosophy, practical ethics, Latin American politics, and foreign policy. Professor Sharpe has been a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, the University of British Columbia and at the Law School at the University of Colorado. He is co-author, with Professor Barry Schwartz, of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do The Right Thing (Penguin/Riverhead, 2010). Two of his most recent papers on practical wisdom, part of his “Designing for Wisdom” research project, are focused on practical wisdom in physician practice and education.
Accreditation:
The University of British Columbia Division of Continuing Professional Development (UBC CPD) is fully accredited by the Committee on Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education (CACME) to provide study credits for continuing medical education for physicians. This course has been reviewed and approved by the UBC Division of Continuing Professional Development. This Group Learning course meets the certification criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and has been certified by UBC CPD for up to 1.5 Mainpro+ credits. This course is an Accredited Group Learning Activity eligible for up to 1.5 MOC Section 1 credits as defined by the Maintenance of Certification program of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Each physician should claim only those credits he/she actually spent in the activity.