Bridging theory and practice is crucial to any clinician’s professional role and continuing education.

However, trying to read theory and keep up-to-date with healthcare’s burgeoning research literature can be time-consuming and feel overwhelming.

Moreover, taking time out of a busy clinical schedule to pause and reflect on aspects of theory and practice in one’s professional role can disrupt routines and expectations.

To address this issue, here are some time-saving tips to help clinicians read more and reflect more critically and creatively on their professional practice.

(1) Review key theoretical concepts

No time to read Heidegger’s Being and Time?

Clinicians can still draw upon philosophy to ground their practice in key theoretical concepts. They are invited to enter into conversations with theorists and theories by first reading summary background information, and then following their interests to read more. One immediate benefit of this approach is that it can help clinicians read qualitative health research and understand more fully its various methods and analyses.

As Hitchcock (2008) says, “different research questions and types of texts or bodies of data lend themselves to different theories and different approaches.” And different theoretical frameworks, “raise questions and address issues related to what it means to study individuals and institutions, political and religious power, assign meaning to the past, and study marginalized categories of evidence.”

Ultimately, she says,

Whether one declares oneself a deconstructionist, a structuralist, or a feminist, or a Foucauldian, a Niezschean, a Bakhtinian, a Derridean, or rejects theory altogether, it is important to attend to the questions these thinkers raise and to approach them with an open mind.

For further reading:

• Hitchcock, L. (2008). Theory for classics: A student’s guide. New York: Routledge.
  • Not just for classics; provides concise introductions to thirty theorists from Freud and Marx, to Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Foucault, Lacan, and Merleau-Ponty, etc.
• Orange, D. (2009) Thinking for clinicians: Philosophical resources for contemporary psychoanalysis and the humanistic psychotherapies. New York: Routledge.
  • Includes chapters on Lévinas, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Buber, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein.
• Orange, D. (2011) The suffering stranger: Hermeneutics for everyday clinical practice. New York: Routledge.
  • Utilizes the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the ethics of Emmanuel Lévinas to critique leading approaches to psychoanalysis.

(2) Monitor new research & literature

Clinicians can save time keeping up-to-date with the latest research and opinions by utilizing search engines, table of contents alerts, and medical librarians, as follows:

• Search key terms in search engines like pubmed.com, and others listed here that every medical professional should bookmark
• By subscribing to a table of contents (ToC) alert for a journal you will receive an e-mail with the table of contents each time a new issue is published.
• Medical librarians can recommend books, journals, and other resources, and they are available to help clinicians conduct literature searches, and set-up ToC email alerts, etc.

(3) Engage communities of practice

Clinicians might present a case study at a professional practice meeting, or they might talk about one over lunch with colleagues and discuss its relevance to their practice and learning goals.

Nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. ~ Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner

(4) Mind the gaps 

A helpful reading strategy for clinicians is to look for what’s missing in a text. By taking note of what’s missing in a book or journal article, whether it’s a particular topic, approach or discipline, or other significant detail that the author might have overlooked, clinicians can leverage and broker knowledge to develop new relationships and strategic partnerships across wider networks.

(5) Collaborate on new projects

Gaps in the literature indicate opportunities for new research studies and quality improvement projects. Collaborative reading and research partners can explore questions and ideas together, share areas of expertise, and divide workload between themselves.

The pay off?

Medical sociologist Arthur Frank (2012) described the need for reflective healthcare practice as follows:

In the course of any present task, we are anticipating the next task, and the pace of the present task takes that anticipation as its metronome. Living in such anticipation is a very un-Zen way to be, always subordinating the present moment. But it gets things done, whether that task is house cleaning or medical rounds.

Reflection interrupts that flow. It is a carved-out space in which we ask ourselves what we’re doing, and who is doing the things that seem to be getting done.

Navigating the creative dialogical middle ground between theory and practice in healthcare—by reading, reflecting, and drawing connections, by providing care informed by research, and by contributing to research— helps develop practical wisdom and wise practice. Or, in a word, what Aristotle called phronesis. 

But I wonder if I might have missed something important.

What’s most interesting and helpful to you in your intersections of theory and practice?

And what time-saving shortcuts would you recommend to help others meet you there?

Frank A.W. (2012) Reflective Healthcare Practice. In: Kinsella E.A., Pitman A. (eds) Phronesis as Professional Knowledge. Professional Practice and Education: A Diversity of Voices, vol 1. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.