Yesterday was my second full day here in Amsterdam at the "Achieving Clinical Excellence" conference put on by the International Center for Clinical Excellence.  The first full day had been a workshop with Scott Miller on "Feedback informed treatment: pushing your clinical effectiveness to the next level".  This second day was the start of the conference proper and was entitled "Excellence: what do we know and what can we learn?".   I walked in from my hotel thinking that I'd be hard pushed to come up with a day of lectures that would interest me more than this exploration of what makes for clinical excellence.

I was particularly looking forward to hearing Professor Anders Ericsson speak on "What excellence requires".  Anders Ericsson is probably the world expert on what is involved in achieving excellence and his books are all time classics in this field.  For a short introduction to some of his key ideas, see his comments on "Expert performance and deliberate practice".  We were also due to have several presenters talking on the general theme of "What do we know about Supershrinks?" and then, after lunch, a choice of symposia on "Deliberate practice" and "Implementing feedback informed treatment".  Finally we were due to end with a brief keynote by Scott and performance by the magician Michael Ammar. 

More to follow ...