Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: Health care and handedness

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Health care and handedness

The word legerdomain featured on Wordsmith's Word.A.Day as listed below:

PRONUNCIATION:
(lej-uhr-duh-MAYN)

MEANING:
noun:
1. Sleight of hand.
2. A display of skill.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French leger de main (light of hand), from leger (light) + de (of) + main (hand). Ultimately the from Indo-European root man- (hand) that's also the source of manage, maintain, maneuver, manufacture, manuscript, and command.
It is a shame and a matter debated at large that specialists - whether medical or of other disciplines - are not held in the high esteem that they once were. And yet when you come across a leader and specialist in their field the way they deploy their knowledge, insight and skills remains something to greatly admire and respect. I mean knowledge and experience that transcends sole reliance on interpersonal skills and blinding people with jargon and 'science'. Such are the outcomes of what the specialist brings to the (operating?) table, that it may even seem like a sleight of hand. Not in the sense that it is a trick, but there is an effortless transparency to not only what they achieve, but how they make people - their patients, clients feel. Not just feel, but how these people react and may find themselves.

If there is a sleight of hand it is in how while a specialist, they can and do cross boundaries. They see and can count the important numbers (evidence) in their discipline, but they know (from some no doubt hard-won lessons) that frequently some of the numbers in the very sequence they need lie outside their comfort zone.

RIGHT-handed (mechanistic)
or
(humanistic) LEFT-handed

- they know there is a
middle
and they cross it, without anyone noticing.