"Soft Skills" Undervalued

     At a Dalhousie university workshop, Lionel Laroche stated the obvious - that in general, technical people eg engineers, value technical knowledge, but have little appreciation for "soft skills" such as interpersonal skills or introspection. 
     It seems health-care professionals, in general, are becoming progressively more technically- rather than people-oriented. Science & technology is displacing the art of healing, the doctor-patient relationship.
     "The medical humanities receive more than their fair share of students’ critiques in terms of both quantity and virulence. ... many refer to humanities teaching as pointless, boring, worthless, or just plain stupid. Even otherwise favorably disposed students are sometimes adamant about not making medical humanities required coursework." 
        Shapiro J et al. Medical humanities and their discontents: definitions, critiques, and implications. Acad Med 2009; 84(2):192-8. 
 
     When ( not if ) these folks get into trouble because of deficiencies in soft skills, they tend to further upgrade their technical knowledge "because they don't know, and don't know that they don't know".
     Laroche L. Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002.

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2014/02/allergy-allert-penicillin-peanuts-wisdom.html

Photo: evangelos k   www.dpreview.com