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Reframing Medical Education

In this lecture series, Professor Roger Kneebone continues the exploration of non-traditional aspects of medical education that he started at Gresham last year. Medicine demands factual knowledge, physical skill and the ability to work with patients and colleagues. Most of the time clinicians learn from other clinicians, studying hard within a frame that discourages exploration outside medicine. By focusing on the performance of medicine, these lectures challenge this traditional frame by connecting with actors, musicians, craftsmen, dancers and other experts. Professor Kneebone explores the idea of frames, using illustrations to ask what benefits may result from thinking widely and challenging longstanding assumptions.

Roger Kneebone is Visiting Professor of Medical Education at Gresham College and Professor of Surgical Education and Engagement Science at Imperial College London. His clinical career has ranged from trauma surgery in Southern Africa to general practice in Wiltshire and he has a longstanding fascination with education and simulation. (from gresham.ac.uk)

Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Lecture 3 Lecture 4

Lecture 1 - Keyhole Surgery Pioneers
This lecture examines how minimal access ('keyhole') surgery has revolutionised medicine in just a few decades. By re-assembling teams of long-retired surgical pioneers from the 1980s and inviting them to re-enact early procedures using realistic simulation it will document the ups and downs of an extraordinary decade. Using video footage and interviews, Professor Kneebone will show how surgeons, radiologists, nurses and instrument manufacturers developed completely new ways of working. Their successes, their failures and their challenges continue to resonate today.

Lecture 2 - Improvising Medicine
Few patients like to think of their physicians or surgeons as improvisers. Yet clinical care is a human art where there will always be uncertainty. Though doctors spend years learning facts and gaining skills, each patient is unique and every situation holds surprises. Musicians also spend years in training - practising scales, learning harmony, mastering technique. Such musicians celebrate their ability to improvise, to respond to one another in the moment in front of an audience. This lecture asks what clinicians can learn from the world of music - and vice versa.

Lecture 3 - The Ethics of Surgical Innovation
Scientific knowledge is advancing at dizzying speed and each day brings new breakthroughs in medical understanding. Unprecedented advances are opening possibilities that only a decade ago would have seemed like science fiction. Yet a deep anxiety pervades our society, raising questions about the wisdom and motives of experts and the implications of new technology. This lecture uses examples from cutting-edge science and medicine to explore the ethical questions which advances in robotics, personalised medicine, transplantation and artificial intelligence pose for doctors, patients and society.

Lecture 4 - What Medicine can Learn from Restaurants about Care
Medical care often frames patients as the passive 'recipients' of expert professional knowledge and skill. This lecture explores what comes into view if we reframe clinical treatment as hospitality, and patients as guests. Drawing on collaborations with leading restaurants and their chefs, this lecture explores parallels between the worlds of fine dining and medical care. In a hospital, as in a restaurant, what happens out of sight (in the operating theatre or the kitchen) must be matched by sensitive care at the bedside, in the clinic or at the table.