Dialogic interactions among multi-professionals in the context of online sessions: The use of Mederu to understand Moyatto experiences

Abstract

This study discusses professional love in the context of online sessions where healthcare professionals employ a dialogic framework to reflect on or explore how discomfort arises in their interprofessional practices. The goal of this study is to provide frontline practitioners and educators with insights into what constitutes professional love in dialogue and to suggest avenues of support for the development of continuous health profession education through such dialogue. We took a reflective writing approach based on observations of dialogic practices. This essay represents a reflective writing conducted by the first author as he explored, in his own practice, love in dialogic interactions among professionals in online sessions. He established a Study Group in 2014, aiming to improve interprofessional collaboration through dialogue on Moyatto, which is defined as emotional, cognitive, and physical distress experienced when individuals face conflicting communication with people who have different viewpoints and interests. We describe actual events that occurred in sessions and interactions that continue even without direct conversations after the conclusion of the session. The results indicate that the first step for professionals to experience love in their professional practice is to share the Moyatto experiences without any quid pro quo in response to the other’s narrative. Even after the session's conclusion, the participants continued to feel something that could not be verbalized because of the other’s alienness. Therefore, the interactions comprising the exchanging of Moyatto experiences can continue even without direct conversations, and such experiences can motivate participants to inquire about perspectives hitherto unknown to them. We postulate that this process can be regarded as Mederu, a Japanese sense of loving used by people to willingly observe and care for the diverse elements of others or materials. This transitional learning that transcends professional and disciplinary boundaries may need to recur at various points in a professional’s career, requiring more sustainable and stable educational resources.