Seeing the patient: professional vision in clinical ward rounds (and beyond)

Clinical ward rounds are complex, high‑stakes encounters in which physicians must integrate clinical reasoning, team coordination, and patient‑centred communication. While ward rounds are routinely described as occasions on which physicians "see" their patients, ironically, the visual dimension of ward round communication has rarely been examined conceptually. In this paper, we argue that communication during ward rounds and other complex clinical encounters crucially relies on physicians' professional vision: learned, task-specific ways of noticing, interpreting, and using visual information in socially and institutionally structured contexts. Drawing on research from medical education, cognitive psychology, and interaction research, we conceptualize professional vision enacted during ward rounds as encompassing two interrelated aspects: a cognitive aspect (noticing and knowledge‑based reasoning) and an embodied and interactional aspect (the coordination of gaze, body, and talk). We show how these aspects unfold across different phases of ward rounds and enable physicians to align information retrieval, decision‑making, teamwork, and patient engagement. By explicating professional vision as a central yet previously under-theorized resource in clinical practice, exemplified here through ward-round communication, this paper offers a conceptual foundation for future empirical research and suggests new directions for simulation‑based and professional vision‑focused instructional approaches in medical education.