Embodying performance excellence in medicine: Can The Six Viewpoints help?

ABSTRACT

Performance excellence in healthcare relies on skilled situational awareness, but there is no comprehensive framework articulating what within a situation requires awareness. Envisioning medicine as a performing artform, we introduce Mary Overlie's The Six Viewpoints-a comprehensive, yet flexible, conceptual framework used in the performing arts world, for teaching, learning, and creating, for over 50 years. We imagine The Viewpoints could serve as a framework to help improve verbal and non-verbal communication and collaboration on medical teams and between providers and their patients. We call on health professions educators to experiment with The Viewpoints to determine how they could be adapted to support performance excellence in the medical arena.