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Surely one of the greatest barriers to changing ones practice in
light of evidence of harm or ineffectualness is the fear of being
different from ones peers in a relatively conservative profession. It
takes brave clinicians to adopt practices outside of what the 'body of
medicine', and thus medico-legal rulings, deem to be current accepted
practice. The discipline of medicine needs to support the 'innovators' and
'early adopters' if their behaviour is supported by good evidence, and not
lump them together with 'quackery' that operates at the fringes of
evidence.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests:
No competing interests
27 February 2004
David B King
Lecturer
Centre for General Practice, University of Qld 4006, Australia
Another reason for using so called ineffective treatments is to allow
time to pass while the patients get better. Cough bottles were not
treatments, they were like egg timers. You gave the patient or the parent
an ineffective coloured liquid in a bottle and asked them to take 5 ml
four times a day out of it. By the time the bottle was empty, the patient
was better, not because the contents worked, but because time had passed.
It was effective , but for the wrong reason.
Peer Pressure
Surely one of the greatest barriers to changing ones practice in
light of evidence of harm or ineffectualness is the fear of being
different from ones peers in a relatively conservative profession. It
takes brave clinicians to adopt practices outside of what the 'body of
medicine', and thus medico-legal rulings, deem to be current accepted
practice. The discipline of medicine needs to support the 'innovators' and
'early adopters' if their behaviour is supported by good evidence, and not
lump them together with 'quackery' that operates at the fringes of
evidence.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests