Making Clinical Sense: A comparative study of how doctors learn in digital times

Project Information

DigitalDoctors

Grant agreement ID: 678390

DOI

10.3030/678390

Project closed

EC signature date 29 February 2016

Start date 1 March 2016

End date 31 May 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 361 507,00

EU contribution

€ 1 361 507,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 5 - DigitalDoctors (Making Clinical Sense: A comparative study of how doctors learn in digital times)

Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Digital technologies are reconfiguring medical practices in ways we still don’t understand. This research project is examining the impact of the digital in medicine by studying the role of pedagogical technologies in how doctors learn the skills of their profession. It focuses on the centuries-old skill of physical examination; a sensing of the body, through the body. Increasingly medical students are learning these skills away from the bedside, through videos, simulated models and in laboratories.
My research team interrogated how learning with these technologies impacts on how doctors learn to sense bodies. Through the rich case of doctors-in-training the study addresseed a key challenge in contemporary life regarding how technologies, particularly those digital and virtual, are implicated in bodily, sensory knowing of the world.

Our research took a historically-attuned comparative anthropology approach, advancing the social study of medicine and medical education research in several new directions. First, a team of three ethnographers conducted fieldwork in Tamale (Ghana), Maastricht (the Netherlands) and Budapest (Hungary) attending to both spectacular and mundane technologies in medical education, recognising that everyday learning situations are filled with technologies old and new. This is the first comparative social study of medical education that has been conducted to date. The study also brought together historical and ethnographic research of technologies closer together, with a historian conducting oral histories and archival research at each site.

Findings of this project have advanced understanding of how the digital and other technologies are implicated in skills learning, and moreover the role of materials in learning. In this study we developed novel sensory and team ethnographic methodologies and have forwarded a unique approach to learning which focuses on the sensory and affective power of artifacts. These academic contributions have very practical relevance to society by not only improving the training of doctors in digital times but also opening up the black-box of learning.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Progress on the project continued to be be excellent and the study has now been completed. In sum, the research team was assembled, our ethnographic fieldwork has completed on time, with no set-backs and with very positive engagements with those in our fieldsites and our historical work conducted across all sites, with no language barriers or impediments to our goals.

In terms of publications, we have been highly productive, with 4 books to date (with the synthesis book Learning Materials, almost completed and ready to send to the publishers (Duke University Press) in autumn 2023), 15 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals in our field especially in medical anthropology, science and technology studies and medical history, as well as 17 book chapters, 12 other articles, 5 films, numerous keynote invitations and further articles currently under revision or review.

In terms of workshop deliverables, we successfully held our first project workshop for humanities and social sciences scholars, which was a great success, and in May 2023 held our second project workshop for medical educators. The formats were highly innovative, involving hands-on events, engagement with the public as well as writing workshops organized by PhDs for PhDs. An outcome of our first project workshop was a blog series in the field of the social study of medicine, which is now in its third series, called Writing Life (on Somatosphere). Our team has contributed 5 articles in the series. Another outcome of the second workshop is a Fringe Editions network we have built amongst creatives and doctors, for further projects.

Due to the qualitative nature of this project, incorporating long term ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories and archival research, significant work was put in the early stages of this project into strengthening connections with our researched communities in order to make the research possible. This was a great achievement, the smooth, timely running of fieldwork and the excellent rapport established with those in the field, which has enabled us to share and co-create the final outputs of the project together with those in the field.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

With the successful and timely completion of ethnographic fieldwork at the three fieldsites - which was risky in that it involved careful ethical considerations, depended on delicate negotiations with local interlocutors and good communication and collaboration among team members - we built the necessary foundation for the first comparative social study of medical education. The addition of the historical arm of the project uniquely brought together historical and ethnographic research to extend beyond the state of the art in the field of social studies of medicine, contributing new theoretical insights as we had hoped.

The developments we have made together in innovative methodologies, particularly those of a comparative, collaborative nature, using digital and sensory techniques, offers a strong contribution to team based social research, with insights which will be relevant not only to the fields of history and anthropology, but also collaborative social sciences and humanities projects more broadly.

Our significant progress in building bridges with the field of medical education has yielded results which will have impact in our own fields, as well as in medical education, and we have solid grounds for thinking that this will have an influence upon the way that doctors will be trained in the future (e.g. invitation to design electives for medical students, invitations to give keynote addresses at medical education conferences, invitations to give grand round talks at hospitals). We have built the necessary networks and collaborations to help achieve this goal, and have many publications, including articles, chapters and books, as well as videos and other material for non-academic audiences, through which we are also disseminating results.

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