Catch the moment: The power of turning mistakes into 'precious' learning opportunities

We developed a series of small group workshops that aim to facilitate communication during very challenging ethically sensitive scenarios within a Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine (NPM) postgraduate curriculum at the University of Ottawa. These workshops are called Scenario-Oriented Learning in Ethics (SOLE). This educational intervention aims to focus attention on the learner's needs and to help them recognize, define, and view each communicative or behavioural mistake as an occasion to achieve a personal-defined learning goal in a controlled environment free of judgement. The goal of this commentary is to describe the importance of timely interruptions during the scenarios allowing mini concurrent-guided debriefing-feedback by focusing upon trainees' communication mistakes, utilizing them as valuable learning opportunities.