title: Depth of understanding and excellence of practice: the question of wholeness and problem-based learning.
abstract: The paper evaluates the importance of conceptions underlying practices in medicine and in medical education. It uses a study of anaesthetists' approaches to practice, and of lectures in problem-based learning, to illustrate the influence of a conception of 'applying knowledge in, or to, practice' and of its apparently serious limitations reflected in practice. A brief background to the pervasiveness of the conception is given, together with discussion of an alternative, and arguably better, conception and its realization in rigorous problem-based learning in contrast to transitional, semi-problem-based learning.
authors.affiliation: School of Vocational, Technolgy and Arts Education, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: D B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Margetson
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000193:education; D003479:Curriculum; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D017145:Models, Educational; D018794:Problem-Based Learning / Q000145:classification*