Professional Reasoning in Healthcare
Navigating Uncertainty Using the Five Finger Framework
1. Edition February 2024
160 Pages, Softcover
Textbook
Further versions
Professional Reasoning in Healthcare
A guide to decision-making and critical thinking in diverse healthcare practice contexts.
Professional reasoning is an essential component of health practice. To thrive in a world that demands constant change where there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer, strong frameworks are needed to support effective decision making. Critical to safe, ethical and culturally responsive practice decisions is the ability to integrate information from research evidence, the client, and the context/environment. Practitioners draw from these elements, along with the expertise of others, and through integration of the information with who they are, what they know, and how they operate. This creates a way forward that is right for the client, applicable to the context, and a good fit with themselves. This book provides such a framework.
Professional Reasoning in Healthcare: Navigating Uncertainty Using the Five Finger Framework aims to drive a revolution in professional decision-making and critical analysis among healthcare professionals. Built around an innovative framework for fostering thinking, this book illustrates the situated nature of learning and the uniqueness of practice decisions to individual practitioners and clients. The simplicity of the Five Finger framework belies the complexity of reasoning it stimulates. Written using narratives, the reader is able to imagine the situation as the thinking is made visible. It provides simple yet effective tools and techniques for promoting reflective and reflexive thinking and for integrating the evidence into effective decisions. It promises to help readers develop habits of critical thinking that lead to healthier, more effective decision-making processes.
Readers will find:
* Scenarios that bring the professional reasoning to life
* Tools and techniques to help translate theory into immediate practice
* Strategies to enhance reflective thinking skills, transformative learning, and sense-making
* Detailed discussion of topics including team culture, person-centred practice, social learning theory, cultural influences on reasoning, emotional intelligence, and more
* An overview of transdisciplinary thinking and a complexity-based view on ethics and values
Professional Reasoning in Healthcare is ideal for healthcare professionals, managers, students, and educators who are charged with developing skills in making critical decisions in diverse practice contexts.
Foreword ix
Preface x
Acknowledgments xii
Chapter 1 Synthesizing Knowledge for Situated Practice: The Five Finger Framework 1
Historical Influences on Professional Reasoning
Helen Jeffery and Susan Ryan
Chapter 2 The Five Finger Framework: Development and Rationale 16
Fostering Thinking Skills
Jan Hendrik Roodt and Linda Robertson
Chapter 3 Grasping the Whole: The Practitioner Perspective 42
Practitioner Influences on Professional Decisions
Sian E. Griffiths, Kim Reay, and Helen Jeffery
Chapter 4 Using the Expertise of Others: Many Hands Make Light Work 57
Accessing Knowledge from Others to Inform Professional Decisions
Elizabeth Martin
Chapter 5 Walking Hand in Hand: Collaborative Practice 68
Eliciting and Incorporating Client Perspectives
Helen Jeffery
Chapter 6 Knowing the Context like the Back of Your Hand 83
Contextual Influences on Professional Reasoning
Helen Jeffery
Chapter 7 Letting the Research Lend a Hand 99
Evaluating, Synthesizing, and Implementing Knowledges
Luciana Blaga and Linda Robertson
Chapter 8 Synthesizing World Views 116
Transdisciplinarity and the Five Finger Framework
Jan Hendrik Roodt
Chapter 9 Tools for Implementing the Five Finger Framework 126
Ideas, Activities, and Tips for Practice and Education Settings
Helen Jeffery and Jan Hendrik Roodt
Index 143
Lara Gallichan BSc Hons, Speech Language Therapist, NZSTA
Written in a clear and accessible manner, there is no doubt this book will be an invaluable resource for students, clinicians, and teachers alike. By providing real-world examples, the reader easily appreciates the value of the Five Finger Framework and how it can improve their professional reasoning and practice. This book should be a compulsory reading for all students, and I would highly recommend it to all practising healthcare workers.
Dr Ruth Jeffery PhD, MSc, PGDip Med Rad Sci (NM), LLB(Hons), BA, BSc, NZDMI.
The ability to critically reflect upon the way that professional reasoning and judgement occurs is pivotal and is profoundly ethical for practice, research, and leadership.
Amongst the unique features of this text is the introduction of the Five Finger Framework to assist lifelong learners to comprehensively problem pose and problem solve. This resonates well with situated learning with its focus upon context, interpersonal relationships and shared decision making.
The book is culturally aware, transdisciplinary and has the potential to become a core text for learners at all levels of education particularly for those within practice-based education and mentorship relationships.
Dr Sheena E.E.Blair Dip OT, M.Ed, ED, FRCOT
Thanks for offering real, concrete, and doable approaches for improving professional reasoning.... using real stories of real practitioners to show how this works in practice.... broadening the views on client and culture.... In short, thanks for "handing us" the Five Finger Framework. It will work for students, practitioners, educators, and scholars. I would adopt it in a heartbeat if I were still teaching!
Barbara A. Schell, Professor Emerita, School of Occupational Therapy, Brenau University, PhD, OT/L, FAOTA.
This internationally relevant text presents the Five Finger Framework as a tool for enabling practice reasoning, critical reflection, and decision-making across a range of transdisciplinary approaches in health and social care settings. The metaphor of a hand unfolds a structured process for thinking through many-layered aspects to reach the end goal we all aim for - working effectively, visibly and in a traceable and thus accountable manner for collaborative solution-focused approaches.
Margaret McKenzie, Associate Professor, Registered Social Worker (NZ)
Linda Robertson is Emeritus Associate Professor at Otago Polytechnic, Te Pkkenga, New Zealand.
Jan Hendrik Roodt is Academic Facilitator, Te Pkkenga, New Zealand, and Director of Polar Analytics, Finland.
Susan Ryan is Professor Emerita at University College Cork, Ireland.
