This article stems from, and builds on, a workshop presented at the College of Occupational Therapists' Annual Conference held in Edinburgh in July 1995. It examines current issues for the profession which impinge on fieldwork education; it challenges some of the myths surrounding fieldwork education and its delivery; and it explores how creative thinking might promote new ventures and enable alternative strategies for fieldwork education to be adopted. Some of the principles believed to be fundamental to the future provision of fieldwork are presented.

The importance of active learning, re¯ective practice and continuing professional development (CPD) for health professionals is well established in the literature.What is open to question is how these goals are achieved; how re¯ective practice can be individualized and sustained; how constraints of time and cost can be overcome. It has been suggested that medical humanities, using literature in health professional education, achieves the desired goals. This paper describes the authors' experiences of medical humanities in order to show how it can provide reflective education, by giving health professionals opportunities to re¯ect on their practice and on themselves as practitioners.The focus on one discipline, Occupational Therapy, shows how medical humanities can be integrated in the career life-cycle of health professionals, creating pathways for lifelong learning.

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