Using Fieldnotes to Enhance General Practitioner Training

The purpose of this paper is to report on an educational practice that utilise cultural anthropological findings conducted for health professionals (general practitioners) who engage with patients, families and communities from a comprehensive perspective. We conducted an educational practice focused on sharing fieldnotes with others for general practitioners. This educational practice aimed to help learners become more cognizant of the perspectives they tend to use while having exposure to the perspectives of others. The main contents of the educational practice were (1) lectures and exercises on the concept of cultural anthropology and how to write fieldnotes, (2) fieldwork on ward rounds, and (3) reflection while sharing fieldnotes. In the process of sharing fieldnotes with others, observers talked about the differences in the points they observed between themselves and others, and made comparisons with their own clinical practice. This educational practice indicates that fieldnote taking and sharing can be used as a method for medical practitioners to reexamine events and phenomena from multiple perspectives.