Practising reflection: a medical humanities approach to occupational therapist education

Abstract

The importance of active learning, reflective practice and continuing professional development (CPD) for health professionals is well established in the literature. What is open to question is how these goals are achieved; how reflective practice can be individualized and sustained; how constraints of time and cost can be overcome. It has been suggested that medical humanities, using literature in health professional education, achieves the desired goals. This paper describes the authors' experiences of medical humanities in order to show how it can provide reflective education, by giving health professionals opportunities to reflect on their practice and on themselves as practitioners. The focus on one discipline, Occupational Therapy, shows how medical humanities can be integrated in the career life-cycle of health professionals, creating pathways for lifelong learning.