Overview

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Primary care clinicians operate within an unseen set of rules: the implicit emotional demands, identity pressures, and unwritten norms absorbed throughout their career. This Hidden Curriculum profoundly shapes clinical judgement, communication, and, critically, personal resilience - a core challenge when managing complex, long-term patient relationships.

 

This highly interactive 180-minute workshop introduces an evidence-based reflective practice framework rooted in Narrative Medicine and the Medical Humanities. The pre-conference workshop provides a structured, psychologically safe space to surface and examine these internalised professional codes.

 

Participants will engage in close reading, guided reflection, and symbolic expression using art materials and found object, including every day, upcycled clinic materials. These methodologies induce slowed attention and the articulation of tacit knowledge that forms otherwise unconscious, perpetual professional behaviour.

 

Clinicians will gain clearer language for their lived experience and learn how core values can be re-centred to sustain meaningful, person-centred care amid high-volume pressures. Participants will leave with a practical reflective model and concrete skills for enhancing patient encounters, team coherence, and supervision.

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Workshop Objectives

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This workshop aims to empower clinicians to:

• Map the unspoken elements of the hidden curriculum that informs their behaviour and identity.

• Sharpen narrative competence through focused close reading and reflective expression.

• Externalise complex lived experiences using symbolic methods to gain immediate clarity.

• Re-centre personal values and clarify what defines and sustains meaning in their current practice.

• Acquire a humanities-based reflective model immediately adaptable for teaching, team supervision, and personal self-care.

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Workshop Outline

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Pedagogical frameworks: Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory, Situated Learning via Community of Practice

 

Key Teaching Methods: Close Reading (Narrative Medicine), Structured Reflective Writing, Symbolic Modelling (Embodied Reflection), Small-Group Dialogue.
 

Take-Home Messages (The 4 R's of Reflective Practice):

• Recognise: The hidden curriculum that silently shapes and informs practice.

• Retreat: Slowed, focused attention is a powerful clinical tool.

• Represent: Externalising complex norms symbolically clarifies values.

• Resource: Reflective practice is a mandatory professional competency.

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Learning Outcomes

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By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify elements of the hidden curriculum influencing their clinical behaviour and identity.

• Practise close reading and reflective interpretation to surface tacit professional knowledge.

• Use symbolic methods to externalise lived experience without entering therapeutic terrain.

• Articulate values and meaning that support sustainable practice in primary care.

• Apply reflective insights to improve communication, self-awareness, and team relationships.