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Endpiece: What next?
Published in Janet Thomas, Understanding and Supporting Professional Carers, 2021
Self-awareness and managerial awareness of stress are the starting points for exploring the underlying systemic processes. Stressed workers frequently blame their problems on the organisation. On the other hand, a worker is often the symptom carrier for a dysfunctional department. Sometimes it is necessary to stand back and allow process to do its work. It is only by looking at the whole picture that creative solutions can be found. A quick fix or a panic reaction may only perpetuate the dysfunction. The unconscious sometimes forces workers to make time for reflection. I find that clients who are too stressed to work, and who take sick leave for stress-related illness, often use the time for lateral thinking.
Psychology and Human Development EMIs
Published in Michael Reilly, Bangaru Raju, Extended Matching Items for the MRCPsych Part 1, 2018
Availability heuristic.Convergent thinking.Divergent thinking.Lateral thinking.Negative transfer effect.Positive transfer effect.Representativeness bias.Trial-and-error learning.
Handling problems, choices and dilemmas
Published in Karen Stainsby, Mari Roberts, Develop your Interpersonal and Self-Management Skills, 2018
For some people, ideas are all very good but they are not the answer to the problem. Only when the problem is solved will any value be placed on the ‘getting there’. Before that time there will sharp intakes of breath, cries of ‘It’ll never work’ and ‘It’s no use thinking like that’. Many of us confine our thinking to the familiar and don’t consider ideas that may seem a bit wacky or off-key. Developing tunnel vision, we look too much at detail and miss the wider picture. We don’t listen to others (even if they may hold the key to our problem), we ‘box ourselves in’. ‘Thinking outside of the box’ means that we learn to trust ourselves and others more and risk being a little bit unconventional (at least for a while). Developed by Edward de Bono,3 a Maltese physician, psychologist and mathematian, ‘Lateral thinking’ is a form of thinking outside of the box; approaching a problem indirectly or by a roundabout route. I have included some further information on this in the Resource section.
Shared music, shared occupation: Embedding music as a socio-altruistic collective- and co-occupation in occupational therapy education
Published in Journal of Occupational Science, 2021
Daniela Castro de Jong, Georgia Pike, Susan West, Harley Valerius, Anne Kay, Stephanie Ellis
Singing and engaging in outreach sessions can be complementary to other arts-related educational strategies. Arts-related teaching strategies are known to be of value in promoting lateral thinking among students in curricula where lateral thinking and creativity appear to be key tools and skills that are often overlooked (Dirette, 2017). The collaboration described here provided students with opportunities for lateral thinking and reflective practice in the early stages of their professional education, with an emphasis on the social nature of the outreach sessions (Law, 2010). While these types of experiences can be challenging to students who seek simple and definitive answers, they can also be rewarding, by understanding others in context (Coppola et al., 2017). Students are asked to articulate and analyse their experiences of engaging in a new occupation. Through participation, students experience first-hand the potential uses of music, singing, and outreach sessions in their future practice, supporting the idea of learning-by-doing (Law, 2010).
Next stop – teaching creativity and innovation in medical education
Published in Medical Teacher, 2019
Heng-Wai Yuen, Abhilash Balakrishnan
To teach or foster the ability in health professionals to think creatively and innovate, medical education and training programs need a different approach. Creativity and innovation require divergent and lateral thinking; these are difficult to be taught and learned in the traditional clinical environment. Novel teaching methods or formats are required – creative thinking and innovative approaches are needed to teach creativity and innovative thinking. Faculty involved should draw from a variety of professions, particularly non-medical ones, e.g. engineering, bioinformatics, material sciences, business, architecture, design and arts. Collaborations between medical schools and industry partners, e.g. health technology companies, pharmaceutical industry, are necessary to expose the students to current and future technology and innovations. The creation of the clinician–innovator track is a step in the right direction. Some institutions have already embarked on this exciting journey (Majmudar et al. 2015).
Adaptive expertise in medical decision making
Published in Medical Teacher, 2018
Another characteristic important to reasoning and problem solving is lateral thinking (De Bono 1970) – colloquially described as “thinking outside the box.” It involves taking an indirect, often creative path toward problem solving, necessitating a departure from the usual stepwise logic traditionally used in vertical thinking. Interestingly, some useful strategies in lateral thinking such as provocation can serve as de-biasing strategies to improve reasoning and decision making. The challenge to “think the opposite” can open the mind up to alternate and disconfirming strategies that can avoid common biases such as confirmation bias and premature diagnostic closure. Such provocations are said to have “movement value” in that they encourage movement away from a known or anticipated idea toward novel ideas that might otherwise not receive consideration and may be useful, for example, with atypical presentations. Lateral thinking also encourages asking the question “why” iteratively, again likely avoiding premature closure, as well as supporting the unpacking principle – serving to remind the decision maker of possibilities that may have been overlooked, and possibly improving the differential diagnosis (Redelmeier et al. 1995).