Expert

What we mean and understand by the term 'expert' says much about where we are on our our journey through life. 

What follows is an interrogation of the term 'expert', using SWOT, an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. Originally a business planning tool developed in the 1960s, SWOT has also become a tool available to those working in healthcare management. This serves to underline the close links between health and business, wellness and productivity. In interrogating 'expert' using one of tools from the master's toolbox, we can take a moment for reflexivity: A re-examination of our heuristics around knowledge through a lens many of us will have seen, with the purpose of revealing a different view. Learning to see the world from different perspectives is important in our journey towards more humanistic practice, recognising that 'human' is a quality we all share.

What does 'expert' actually mean?

Strength...

Seeing expert within us all. Not the qualifications, expected outcomes, 'above and beyond', but the knowledge that comes with learning and life. A life-long narrative. This is a privilege to hear, and one that necessitates interactions built on our humility and mutual respect. Being alongside, instead of above, is a space that offers greater freedom to move our practice, new ways to connect and the opportunity to see the world from different viewpoints. 

Weakness... 

A belief that expert, and hierarchies of expertise, come solely through formal pathways. These routes to success/ knowledge are themselves preclusive, due to stringent, yet all too often unwritten rules about who can make progress here. This is furthermore, and all-too-often, a countable knowledge status: years served, grades achieved, points won. Those voices who don't 'make the grade', all too often count less. Just like in nature, a monoculture ecosystem is invariably fragile and risks failure. We need only to look at burgeoning mental health waiting lists or the increasing numbers of young people overwhelmed and traumatised by the education system to see this in action.

Opportunity...

Creating space to be curious, to hear, to reflect, to grow equally alongside those we support. Experts by experience help us to learn humility, to experience the inherent diversity of life that can't be captured in simple scores; to see a person, not an object. Our care is immeasurably more caring, more effective and more human as a result.

Threat...

The policies, procedures and bodies/ institutions who continually stand by learnt expertise as the benchmark and pinnacle of evidence based practice. Those who feel they have the power to do good, by sharing only their version of understanding and insight. Sometimes they may even stand behind lived experience examples to justify their view, yet these often come from people who repeat the 'desired and expected' message they have been told. The teacher is then still in control, and rewarding those who have had no other choice, but to listen to and repeat the lesson that has been offered. This is 'lite' practice and a threat to a sustainable shift towards neurodiversity-affirming ways of offering care. 

'Expert' is not an absolute, but a state of movement on a shared journey.

'Expert' is a collaboration, not a solo voyage.

A commitment to openness and curiosity is important, no shortcuts, no binaries of best or worst, and no need for tools that limit, rather than expand, just different views experienced and heard, reflected on and valued together.

Follow A Labour of Moles