Flash, or no flash?
In my neighbourhood, there is a machine that tells you what speed you’re driving. It flashes when you’re going too fast. Whether you’re 1 km/h too fast, or 100, the flash is the same. Whether the road is covered in ice or not, the flash is the same.
It’s a simple machine. Too fast? Flash.
It doesn’t know why it’s set to tell you that you’re over the speed. It can’t recognize that when there’s ice on the road, or if a row of ducks is crossing the road, the speed limit is actually too fast.
It can’t adjust what it tells you to anything relevant that might change the safe speed in that area.
Traditional evidence-based medicine teaching is based around creating simple machines. Since the 1970’s, the effort has been to create “dumbed down” tools to make evidence-based practice more “accessible” as though we could boil it down to “ok” and “too fast”. So we created “rules” like “numbers needed to treat”, and “the hierarchy of study designs” to make things easier. We created “research reviews” without teaching people that the use of research is contextual — not just a “flash” or “no flash”.
But I think all we did was make things worse. We didn’t ask the question, “What is evidence-based practice for?” By creating blind tools, health professionals came to believe that things are way more complicated than they actually are — because if you’re just a simple machine that flashes or doesn’t flash, nuance LOOKS difficult. We created a generation of health professionals that believe evidence-based practice is beyond their ability.
At your core, you are not a simple machine. You’ve just been taught to be one. The task in front of you is to reject the story that you’ve been fed in order to become more. To become better.
Learn more at http://criticalmass.ninja
