"There is no set of rules that will tell teachers how to teach, or doctors how to doctor," he says. "There is no set of incentives that bankers won’t find a way to subvert, as we have witnessed in the last couple of years in the world economic meltdown. So you need people who want to do the right thing because it’s the right thing."

Schwartz says rules, regulations and incentives are necessary, but learning how to become wise - how to recognize the right thing and do it - requires experience, trying and failing, learning from mistakes and trying again.

He compares practical wisdom to jazz.

"There are notes on the page and those are like rules, but what makes the heart of jazz is not playing the notes on the page, he says. "It’s improvising around the notes on the page. And a wise practitioner knows the notes, can read the notes, but also knows how to improvise."

The ‘wise practitioner’ is also empathic.

"If a doctor is dealing with a patient, the doctor needs to ask 'What does this patient need? How does this patient feel? How should I couch the bad news that I’m about to give this particular patient so that it won’t be completely devastating and demoralizing, while still being true?'" he says. "So unless you can sort of get into the head and heart of other people, you will get it wrong."

Dr. David Hirsh, co-founder of Harvard Medical School-Cambridge Integrated Clerkship says the program allows third-year medical students to follow their patients for a whole year under the watchful eye of an experienced physician.