Being a great clinician has always been more of a craft than a science.
We learn by watching and doing, through the shared glance across a patient’s bed, the gentle way an expert guides your thinking, the precise tone needed for a difficult conversation. It’s knowledge absorbed through presence, not protocol.
Yet training a growing workforce has forced us into compromise. We’ve had to capture this craft in words, transforming it into standard procedures, PowerPoint slides, and e-learning modules.
To deliver education at a large scale, we had to flatten our expertise into text. Like a flat-pack manual, the instructions are correct, but the soul of the craftsmanship has been lost.
The result is a gap between knowing and doing. We risk training those who are excellent on paper but less confident in practice. The instructions are there, but the artistry and the feel for the job are missing.
Video offers a way to bridge this gap. It can help restore the missing dimension to our training, capturing the rhythm of a procedure, the subtle body language of a challenging conversation, or the quiet assurance of an expert at work. When done well, video reveals not just what to do, but how it should look and feel. YouTube’s popularity demonstrates a fundamental truth: people learn more effectively when they can see something being demonstrated.
This points to a new, essential skill for all of us. Being able to clearly explain something on camera is becoming as important as writing a clear summary. This isn’t about becoming a social media star; it’s about being a better teacher and colleague. It’s about passing on your knowledge, skills and craftsmanship more effectively.
So as we create the training for the next generation of clinicians, we have a choice. Will we just leave them a library of instructions? Or can we leave them a living archive of our skills and knowledge?
Never before in healthcare has it been easier to share both the science and the art of what we do. The question is: will we seize this opportunity?