In light of last week’s post on my observations from court and the recent activity on a couple of the listservs to which I belong, I thought I would expand a bit on the issue of making changes to your practice. I find that people float a lot of ideas out there and some folks are awfully quick to up and make changes based on what they read without necessarily having much evidence to do so (especially when it’s a bright and shiny new toy or a well-known name attached to a particular idea). But the thing is, when you are trying to provide the best possible care to patients AND you will need to be able to explain and defend the clinical decisions you make with those patients in court from time to time, there needs to be actual evidence to support changes you ultimately make to your practice.
Whether it’s adopting new technology or a new technique for gathering information or assessing a patient, there has to be an evidence base for its use. So, because I lean toward visual learning, I developed a flow chart that I hope will help:
Click on the image to enlarge it or download the PDF: