Leveraging Errors to Enhance Learning in Health Professions Education

Date: Friday, 25 September 2026 | Time: 1120 - 1250 | Venue: PSL2 [Combined]

Track Type: Workshop

Speaker(s):

Overview:

The literature shows that errors offer valuable learning opportunities, but how can front-line clinician educators use them purposefully? Errors are often treated as unintended outcomes to reflect on after the fact. Yet research on error-based learning shows that deliberately introduced errors can promote deeper understanding and improve transfer of learning. The challenge is knowing how much difficulty to introduce, for whom, and in which settings. 

Health professions education often emphasises error avoidance, which can limit opportunities for learners to develop flexible problem-solving skills for unpredictable clinical practice. If educators do not know how to use errors constructively, an important opportunity to strengthen conceptual understanding, adaptability, and transfer may be lost. 

This workshop will focus on how to design learning experiences that purposefully and safely incorporate errors to support learning. We will briefly review the evidence behind error-based learning strategies, distinguish productive from unproductive errors, and offer a simple practical framework for applying these strategies in clinical and non-clinical learning environments. Through discussion and case-based examples, participants will begin adapting these ideas to their own teaching contexts.