KeyLIME+ [24] Embracing Complexity: Fostering Adaptive Expertise in Medical Education
Sep 16, 2025
In this insightful discussion, Maria Mylopoulos, a senior scientist and associate director at the Wilson Centre, shares her expertise on adaptive expertise in medical education. She explains the critical differences between routine and adaptive expertise, emphasizing the need for innovative problem-solving in modern healthcare. The conversation highlights how embracing uncertainty can enhance learning, while productive struggle allows learners to build resilience. Mylopoulos also offers practical advice for educators on integrating flexibility and variation into curricula to develop future-ready physicians.
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Adaptive Expertise Fills A Growing Gap
- Adaptive expertise adds the ability to create new solutions when problems are novel or ambiguous.
- Medical education must move beyond efficiency and routine performance to teach this adaptive capacity.
Deliberate Practice Versus Adaptive Skill
- Deliberate practice trains reproducible superior performance for known tasks.
- Adaptive expertise complements deliberate practice by preparing clinicians to construct novel solutions when no known best practice exists.
Prioritize Conceptual Understanding
- Teach the 'why' behind procedures, not just the steps to follow.
- Emphasize conceptual understanding so learners can adapt when routines fail or resources differ.