I am currently a medical person. This is how I self-describe - most recently at a drive-thru when asked if I was a doctor ("Not yet; just a medical person.") But in my previous life, I was an education person.
There is an education guy named Vygotsky who talked a lot about the 'Zone of Proximal Development'. It's the idea that learning happens best when you keep the task just barely above the comfort range of your learner. Let 'em get a few right, then they get one wrong, you help them fix it, and then the task gets a little harder and repeat. Gradually, the learner gets better.
One of the nice aspects of surgical education is the tight nature of the teacher/student thing. I start sewing, I'm holding the needle backhand - "flip that" - and I'm standing wrong - "turn your body". Put a few in, then how do I...? - "needle in subcuticular, bring it through the skin, and tie the knot". I like it, it works. I feel a lot of the time like a toddler of surgery, but I'm getting a little bit less hopeless every day.
In any case, the fact that I have that scaffold is pretty key - because left to my own devices, everything would be too frustrating to do.
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