Syndicom

Developing professional artistry for challenging cases – Beyond best practice

Donald Schon in his book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, argues that in considering professional practice solely as a process of rational problem solving, we ignore the artistic process of problem setting, or how we choose the decision to be made, the ends to be met and how we will get there. This artistic process is especially important when dealing with unique or challenging cases because what makes them unique is the way in which they elude our usual solutions.

In order to deal with such situations, we cannot rely solely on ‘best practices’ but must instead our own repertoire of expectations, images and techniques that guide the practitioner intuitively in situations of uncertainty and uniqueness. This knowledge is not constant, but constantly evolving. It is also “knowing in action” where knowledge is revealed in the skillful execution of the performance. Such knowing is characteristically difficult to make verbally explicit, making it beyond best practice. It is also extraordinarily creative and instinctive due to its situational specificity. Constructed on the back of experimentation and tacit knowledge, such professional artistry requires the practitioner to radically question their initial understanding of the case, describe it differently and the experiment. When practitioners work this way, reflecting in action, they become ‘researchers in practice’, so that they are not just mere user’s of a product but are able to reveal how the product designer may have thought differently about its construction and employment.

In order to enhance and sustain professional artistry though, there need to be opportunities constructed for reflection in action and a partnership of practitioner-researchers and researcher-practitioners present. This is exactly what Applied Spine found in their recent use of SpineConnect and its ‘surgeon ecosystem’. Syndicom created a unique group for Applied Spine to trial Stabilimax NZ ® within SpineConnect, posting both pre-op and post-op images of cases for the surgeon community to engage (the opportunity for reflection in action). As time passed and needs changed and practitioners engaged the cases and the device, both the surgeons and Applied Spine became aware of the different ways in which the device can be used and can evolve (partnering in reflective action). SpineConnect also enables a central repository of cases, submitted by its surgeon community enabling continuous and continual ‘reflection in action’ and training as community members respond to each of the cases, drawing on their own practice repertoires and developing their professional artistry. As Thomas E. Wood, CEO of Applied Spine says, “we haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of the Stabilimax group’s potential.”

Kirsten Broadfoot