Luminary Learning Gastrointestinal Disorder- Issue 1

50  Learning to work together through talk: continuing professional development in medicine Walter Eppich, Jan-Joost Rethans, PimW. Teunissen, Tim Dornan Learning toWork Together Through Talk Becoming a physician is a lengthy process. The trajectory begins after secondary school, may include a general university degree before entering 4–6 years of medical school, and ends with some form of structured graduate training program. The latter can last from 3 to more than 10 years, after which physicians must continue to learn throughout their professional lives. They need not only to stay abreast of the evidence that informs practice, but also to translate evidence into action within the social context of clinical environments. In discussing how all of this might progress, this chapter has three main sections. In the first one, we focus on learning from work when becoming a doctor and explore an emerging framework for practice-based learning in healthcare. We highlight the essential role of ‘talk’ as a mediator of learning and how it informs communication practices. We address limitations of learning from work, including social struc- tures that promote communication breakdowns. In the second section, we outline the current state of formal continuing professional development (CPD) in medicine, the stated goal of which is to maintain or further develop physicians’ competence. In doing so, we highlight the paradox 5 W. Eppich (  ) Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: w-eppich@northwestern.edu J.-J. Rethans School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands P. W. Teunissen School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands T. Dornan School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands Queens University Belfast, Belfast, UK