Humility in medical practice: a qualitative study of peer-nominated excellent clinicians
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Humility has recently been conceptualized as a positive, multifaceted attribute in fields outside of medicine, such as psychology and philosophy. In medicine, there has been limited study into the nature of humility and its role in clinical practice. We sought to develop a deeper understanding of humility in medical practice through the lived-experiences of peer-nominated excellent clinicians. METHODS: We conducted a qualitative study with secondary analysis of transcripts from individual open ended, semi-structured interviews of 13 peer nominated physicians [7 (54%) female] at an academic centre. Using constant comparative analysis, the transcripts were analyzed for instances where humility was discussed as it related to clinical practice. RESULTS: Participants perceived humility to be an important driver for excellence in clinical practice. This was further explained using two overarching themes: an inward, intellectual perspective and an outward, social perspective. The physician's inward perspective was their view of their abilities and limits, their self-confidence, and their intellectual openness and adaptability to the limitations and evolving nature of knowledge in medicine. Their outward perspective was an understanding and appreciation for the larger system in which they worked, an openness to others, and valuing patients' experience. Through these perspectives, humility positively influenced clinical care, learning and curiosity, motivation in the care of others, and relationships with team members and patients. CONCLUSIONS: Humility in medicine is a rich, multifaceted construct that was perceived to be a driver for excellence in medical practice by peer-nominated excellent clinicians. Humility was seen as an active force in formulating and calibrating a clinician's perspective of self and of others, and as such, positively influencing clinical practice. These findings will help inform a discourse in medical education and faculty development about the important role of humility in medical practice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.046 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".