Background: Care and education have much in common, and work in the healthcare sector is closely associated with learning and teaching. It is felt that many in the healthcare and medical services are not aware of their pedagogic skills and how they can be developed. FRAME OF REFERENCE: Belonging to a community of practice means that you share perspectives, methods and language.
Objective: The aim is to describe the pedagogical discourse by identifying pedagogical processes and studying the staff's awareness of such processes or situations in which a pedagogical approach would be useful in their work with patients and next of kin.
Method: A qualitative study based on individual and group interviews. The analysis is directed by grounded theory.
Results: The pedagogical processes varied in length and quality. Most were unplanned and were usually embedded in treatment. The pedagogical process is linear (planning, goal setting, teaching and evaluating) in an educational setting but we found that the beginning and end can be unclear and the goals can be vague or non-existent. The pedagogical process is best described using the concepts Read, Guide and Provide learning support.
Discussion: The pedagogical discourse in healthcare is almost silent. Data indicate that at the collective level there is very little support for professional development of pedagogical ability. Tacit knowledge may therefore remain silent even though it may be possible to formulate and describe it.
Conclusions: There is a strong need to focus on the pedagogical parts of the work and to encourage and support the development of professional pedagogical knowledge.