Presentations beyond The Matrix: The Fred MacLeod JPS lecture, CAPS 2019
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In brief
In brief
This Fred MacLeod lecture examines the 17-year gap between new medical evidence and clinical implementation, challenging the assumption that traditional lecture-style presentations effectively translate knowledge. Drawing on educational psychology, it argues that passive listening fails to drive practice change.
Written by the GCMD Library team from the article.
Current research calculates the time between development of new evidence-based knowledge into established clinical practice as 17 years. This is the knowledge translation gap. The factors influencing this delay are multiple, but it is clear across the history of medicine that knowledge from new, well-constructed studies does not lead directly to change. A significant factor within the knowledge translation gap is the nature of the presentations as they are currently delivered. In the 1999 film The Matrix, there is a discussion between two characters regarding the concept that the world we perceive is, in fact, a virtual reality. As we inhabit this construct, we have a fleeting awareness that the world may not be as we perceive it, but the truth of what that entails is overwhelming. The implicit beliefs underpinning a presentation are that reading out a presentation is teaching, and the corollary, that listening to that presentation is learning. The evidence in the psychological and educational literature is clear that this is false. The implications of this are significant. This is The Matrix of knowledge translation.