ABSTRACT
Key to developing a medical humanities-infused medical education is understanding and applying complexity models. As medical education regresses to competence and training models, so it favours closed, linear, technical, engineering approaches over complexity. While linear approaches can be complicated, they are not complex: nonlinear, open, and adaptive. A major symptom of a self-harming medical pedagogy is a failure to “think complexity”. For example, a syllabus (content) can be complicated but is not complex, restricted by set outcomes and common processes; where a curriculum (process) is open-ended, adaptive, and often at maximum complexity at the edge of chaos, without falling into chaos. Such meta-thinking is rarely formally taught to medical students, although complexity theory has a strong presence in life sciences. Examples of thinking with complexity are drawn from the medical education literature, embracing how to work in collectives such as clinical teams. Clinical workplaces are fluid and demand high levels of adaptability and innovation. Resistances to complexity from linear habits can be countered through medical humanities interventions.
