A Model for Wise Clinical Leadership

Sue McNaughton

AUT

In this session I would like to present a draft model for wise clinical leadership. This model is based on a study of Secondary School Biology and Chemistry, and four first year clinical program assessments. In this study it was found that there was a lack of affective and psychomotor (physical skills) assessment at school which translated into issues for students who were faced with the need to acquire professional attitudes and skills. Similarly, clinical educators expressed concerns that they required robust ways of developing and assessing skills and attitudes, while recognizing that modelling of these was imperative for learning.

The model was developed from a leadership paper, as I investigated the interplay between teaching and the acquisition of clinical wisdom. I conducted a review of the literature around wise leadership and analysed it in a framework of four major health discourses at AUT and in NZ health in general: Ecological model organisational culture, social justice, clinical wisdom, and educating public health practitioners. Seven main themes emerged. I then identified current realities impacting on these themes, and produced a draft model of wise clinical leadership to effectively develop skills and attitudes in students.

Work on my Master of Education thesis, a phenomenographic analysis of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work, will hopefully provide some insights into the psychomotor aspects of the development of clinical wisdom in particular.

My own background in medicine, science teaching and lately in an oral health clinic, has led me to believe that while wisdom is easily recognized in ‘excellent professionals’, the concept is more difficult to unpack, and the current trend toward competency based assessment may miss it altogether.

How will the session run?

I envisage introducing myself briefly, and then presenting the model as a 3-5 slide powerpoint, with perhaps 3 slides prior to explain the process described in the abstract. I would then like to hear what others have to say about the model, and how this might have utility in our understanding of psychomotor skills, wisdom and leadership.