Why is it so hard to do less in healthcare?
From cutting down the use of antibiotics to unnecessary lab tests and scans, how can we support patients and staff to consider and accept that less may be better? Overmedicalisation is often seen as a problem that can be solved by educating patients and staff to accept that less may be better.
In this episode, host Tara Lamont and guests Heather Cassie, Claire Hastings and Jane O’Hara explore some of the reasons why this can be hard for staff and systems in healthcare today.
- How do we know what to reduce or add into the system?
- Where are the trade-offs between policies, processes and patient expectations?
- The importance of trust in staff-patient relationships and how health literacy affects patient expectations
About our guests
Tara Lamont has been a Senior Advisor to the Fellowships programme at THIS Institute since 2021. With over thirty years’ experience in health services research and policy, Tara currently provides scientific support to NIHR programmes and has led national work on engagement and dissemination of health research.
Heather Cassie is a health service researcher with expertise in qualitative methods and applying behavioural theory to improve patient care. She has particular interest in identifying strategies to reduce non-evidenced based healthcare or ‘low value care’, within a primary care dental setting which she explores in her THIS fellowship project.
Claire Hastings is a paramedic with over 20 years of experience in healthcare. For the last decade, she has been lecturing on a range of paramedic programmes. Her THIS fellowship research explores alternatives approaches such as ‘not doing’ in healthcare as a benefit to service users.
Jane O’Hara is a patient safety researcher with extensive experience of developing and evaluating interventions to improve the safety of care. She is a Director of Research at THIS Institute.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music.