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Learning Transfer in Practice: A Qualitative Study of Medical Professionals’ Perspectives

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Human Resource Development Quarterly

Published online on

Abstract

This article explores how medical professionals’ understanding of their own profession relates to their learning transfer. Based on qualitative interviews with medical professionals participating in a mind–body medicine training program, we examined the rationales provided by medical professionals for their decisions on whether to integrate new learning in their current and future clinical practice. The findings show that medical professionals’ beliefs and values about the profession of medicine and knowledge of the wider healthcare system affect their decisions concerning applying what they had learned in practice. Specifically, (a) medical professionals’ prior beliefs and developing understandings of the purpose of the profession, (b) their prior beliefs and developing understandings of good clinical practice, and (c) their understandings of clinical practice as a marketplace geared to client satisfaction and regulated by the healthcare system are critical to understanding how they decided to transfer what they had learned and to make changes in their practices. Based on the findings, implications for research and practice are proposed.