Practical wisdom
By exploring the theories that underpin our participants’ experiences, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how these frameworks apply in practical settings.
Summary
- Practical wisdom means having the experience and knowledge to live a good life.
- In caring for older people, practical wisdom can be very useful. It’s important to recognise the wisdom that patients have gained over their lives and include their insights in treatment decisions.
- Healthcare professionals should strive to develop practical wisdom. Over time, it becomes an instinctive skill they can rely on. This requires self-reflection, humility, flexibility, open-mindedness, and being open to feedback from both colleagues and patients.
- Professionals with practical wisdom are more likely to show compassion and understand their patients’ lives beyond just their medical needs, making more thoughtful and well-rounded decisions.
The virtue-ethical tradition in moral philosophy has considered wisdom to be one of the most predominant virtues, dating back to Aristotle. Traditionally a distinction is made between theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom, whereby theoretical wisdom generally refers to having acquired relevant knowledge and insight, and practical wisdom generally refers to having the experience and knowledge of how to lead a good life. Contemporary research on wisdom has been undertaken from a variety of disciplines, including psychological, sociological and philosophical perspectives. Characteristics of wisdom that these interpretations tend to have in common include the capacity for tolerance, the capacity for accepting uncertainty, empathy and compassion towards other people, and the desire to contribute to the common good.
Whereas psychological perspectives tend to view wisdom as a set of individual personality characteristics and focus on the development of sophisticated measurement instruments, philosophical perspectives conceive of wisdom as a social practice that enables people to respond to others, to themselves and to the problems of human existence in a well-reflected way.
When applied to the context of good care for older people, the concept of (practical) wisdom could be useful in several ways. First of all, it is advisable to develop a sensitivity towards the practical wisdom that patients have developed in their lives and include their insights in the making of decisions about treatment. Second, practical wisdom can be seen as a virtue that healthcare professionals should always strive to develop and apply in their professional practice. With experience, practical wisdom will evolve into tacit knowledge that professionals can rely on. It requires engaging in self-reflection, being modest, flexible and open-minded, perceptive of feedback, not only from colleagues but also from patients themselves. Healthcare professionals that exhibit practical wisdom can be expected to show more openness and compassion towards their patients’ life perspective, and make decisions that are informed by the broader embedding in their life context rather than just by their medical background.
Further reading
- Edmondson, Ricca (2015). Aging, insight and wisdom. Meaning and practice across the lifecourse. Bristol: Policy Press.
- Sternberg, Robert & Glück, Judith (eds). (2015). The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.