What is GP wisdom?


#GPFUQ 25 What is real GP Knowledge? Information with experience, context, interpretation and reflection. Tacit knowledge is personal know-how, explicit knowledge is the evidence based medicine.

#GPFUQ 26  How do GPs survive complaints? Accept that it will ruin your day. Acknowledge and share the problem. All GPs make mistakes. Learn from each mistake, and avoid making the same mistake again


#GPFUQ 27 What is GP wisdom? The reward for a lifetime of listening when you really wanted to talk

#GPFUQ 28  How long does it take to become a wise GP? Less time if you know its unachievable, you just get smarter than you were yesterday because you learn from your experiences. Only the wisest and stupidest GPs never change. Mostly, you don’t discover any great truth just recognise your mistakes more. The more mistakes you have made the wiser you may be! To become old and wise you usually have to learn from being young and stupid. The opposite of wisdom is making the same mistake over and over.

#GPFUQ 29  What the difference between experience and making mistakes. Experience reminds you and makes you recognise a mistake when you make it again. Its inevitable that you will make mistakes – that fuels learning. It you keep making the same mistake – that’s incompetence.

#GPFUQ 30 Why do smart people do stupid things? We are overwhelmed by an illusion that influences our thinking and makes the nearest and easiest solutions seem the biggest and best options. This is known as ‘the hyperbolic discount curve’. We may be trying to make decisions without sufficient information, when we are distracted, or based on flawed assumptions. We need our wisdom to lash us to the mast and let us override impulses and compelling illusions and direct a different way of thinking and action based on life experience, self awareness, patience and choice. With increasing experience wisdom gradually governs our willpower. See also #GPFUQ 33

#GPFUQ 31 Can wisdom be taught? There is a faster way to be wise. Wisdom is way of travel rather a destination. Its always influenced by your age and experience. Asking the question – is this a wise choice is a good start.

#GPFUQ 32  What's the personal difference between success and failure? Success gives you a habit, failure gives you learning

#GPFUQ 33 What is gut reaction? That personal special sense that warns you that something isn’t right. This is really expert intuition – its nothing more than recognition of patterns. You may not be aware that you have recognized a pattern or something that doesn’t fit in the expected pattern but the mind processes more quickly than we can comprehend and if you’re aware of it you are alert to its warnings. There is a danger when you leap to conclusions that you have insufficient information to recognise a pattern but are influenced by something similar you have just seen..this creates the 'strong but wrong' gut reaction.