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As a rhetorician, my research emphasizes what communication does, the way it shapes understanding and action in social settings. In three major programmatic threads, my research team has studied how medical trainees and their supervisors communicate during clinical education activities; how health care professionals communicate to collaboratively deliver clinical care in a variety of healthcare settings; and how communication and collaboration factor into medical education’s emerging sense of what it means by “competence”. The governing premise across all my work is that language is not only descriptive: it is also constructive of our realities.

Overall, I would characterize my research as revealing that what we think of as “common sense” – in short, our unquestioned “reality” – is actually constructed by pervasive (and often tacit) language practices. This keynote presentation will describe highlights from this research program, reflect on methodological challenges, and share personal lessons I’ve learned as a scientist charting what has often been new – and sometimes threatening – research territory in health professions education.