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Communities of Practice and Medical Education

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Clinical Education for the Health Professions

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Abstract

Learning is fundamentally a social process, which depends highly on context. Effective education requires learning that is embedded in authentic practice, wherein learners engage in increasingly more complex tasks within social communities. The development of professional identity is a dynamic negotiated process realized through interactional relationships that foster clear understanding of professional standards, ethical values, ideology, and conduct. Communities of practice provide a rich framework for approaching cross-discipline learning that champions innovation and understanding at boundaries of workplace interprofessional interactions. Intentional collaboration in landscapes of practice enables interdisciplinary CoPs to work as teams to prepare learners for successful interprofessional collaboration in practice. The concept of CoP has given impetus to the diversified field of research and theory of “practice-based studies.”

The positive development of a society in the absence of creative, independently thinking, critical individuals is as inconceivable as the development of an individual in the absence of the stimulus of the community.

Albert Einstein

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RSCI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland

    Claire Condron & Walter Eppich

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  1. Claire Condron
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  2. Walter Eppich
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Correspondence to Claire Condron .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Debra Nestel

  2. King's College London, London, UK

    Gabriel Reedy

  3. School of Nursing and Midwifery, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia

    Lisa McKenna

  4. Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia

    Suzanne Gough

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Condron, C., Eppich, W. (2022). Communities of Practice and Medical Education. In: Nestel, D., Reedy, G., McKenna, L., Gough, S. (eds) Clinical Education for the Health Professions. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6106-7_28-1

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