A therapeutic intervention for an ailing medical education: The values prism model as proof of concept

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.

Keywords:

• Curriculum
• instrumentalism
• metaphor
• values prism

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

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Alan Bleakley

Alan Bleakley, DPhil, is an Emeritus Professor, Peninsula Medical School, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth UK.