Abstract
Purpose
To articulate proof of concept in relation to a complex pedagogical values intervention for a range of medical education’s historically accumulated symptoms.
Methods
Using a discursive approach, symptoms that hinder development of medical education are set out. Such symptoms rest with the instrumentality of current pedagogical approaches, supressing potential. A ‘cure’ is articulated – that the dominant values complex of instrumentalism is raised in quality through embracing ethical, aesthetic, political, and transcendental (meaning) values. Key to this is the use of language in clinical encounters, where the productive metaphor count is repressed in instrumental-technical approaches but multiplied in embracing other values and qualities. This ‘Values Prism’ model shows instrumentalism passing through an expansive educational prism to create expansion in types and qualities.
Results and conclusions
Proof of concept is achieved. The Values Prism model can be adapted for any undergraduate medicine curriculum as a process model – a set of values that permeate the curriculum beyond the dominant instrumental. The enhanced and expanded curriculum acts in a translational capacity.
Acknowledgments
Clinical colleagues in the early (and heady) days of Peninsula Medical School went out on a limb to support the Values Prism initiative. I would like to thank Dr Robert Marshall, Professor Tony Pinching, and Professor John Bligh.
Disclosure statement
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Alan Bleakley
Alan Bleakley, DPhil, is an Emeritus Professor, Peninsula Medical School, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth UK.