JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

The term ‘experience’ is widely used in health education literature. Yet, it has not been explicitly defined in this field, which could lead to multiple interpretations by researchers, teachers and health students. Philosophical works offer clear definitions of ‘experience’, which could provide useful theoretical insights for its appropriation in research, practice and teaching. Notably, pragmatist, rationalist and phenomenological philosophers John Dewey, Georges Canguilhem and Maurice Merleau-Ponty define experience as the significance that emerges during the interaction between a subject and its environment. They distinguish between episodic - making an experience - and cumulative - acquiring experience - dimensions. The article further explores the implications of this definition in health education, particularly through the lens of experiential learning, contrasting it with traditional educational approaches. This framework has also paved the way for a method of exploring experience designed to facilitate awareness, known as the ‘explicitation interview’. Studies utilizing this method have yielded interesting results in understanding the activities of students, healthcare professionals, and patients in real-life situations, particularly regarding the influence of context on reasoning and decision-making. The explicitation interview can also be employed as a training tool through the supervision of past situations. We summarize the principles of this method and give the reader a few tools to experiment with it themselves and with their students.