Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview

Traditionally, professional expertise has been judged by length of experience, reputation, and perceived mastery of knowledge and skill. Unfortunately, recent research demonstrates only a weak relationship between these indicators of expertise and actual, observed performance. In fact, observed perf...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Academic emergency medicine 2008-11, Vol.15 (11), p.988-994
Main Author: Anders Ericsson, K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clinical Competence - standards
Emergency medical care
Experts
Human performance
Humans
Knowledge
Leisure Activities
Performance evaluation
Physicians - standards
Practice (Psychology)
Professional Competence - standards
Professional development
Skills
Task Performance and Analysis
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Summary:Traditionally, professional expertise has been judged by length of experience, reputation, and perceived mastery of knowledge and skill. Unfortunately, recent research demonstrates only a weak relationship between these indicators of expertise and actual, observed performance. In fact, observed performance does not necessarily correlate with greater professional experience. Expert performance can, however, be traced to active engagement in deliberate practice (DP), where training (often designed and arranged by their teachers and coaches) is focused on improving particular tasks. DP also involves the provision of immediate feedback, time for problem‐solving and evaluation, and opportunities for repeated performance to refine behavior. In this article, we draw upon the principles of DP established in other domains, such as chess, music, typing, and sports to provide insight into developing expert performance in medicine.
ISSN:1069-6563
1553-2712
DOI:10.1111/j.1553-2712.2008.00227.x