May 2009

Beyond education and training: Making change stick

Goodman S, Gordon R, Eckhardt C, Osborne S, Grossman D, Spiedel JJ. Beyond education and training: Making change stick. Contraception. May 2009; 79(5):331-333.

Medicine is in constant change, with new evidence continually replacing how we consider health and illness. In health care we are deluged with articles about change — how to accomplish it, how to measure it, how to sustain it. Patients have become more robust advocates. With the proliferation of new medications and data, both patients and clinicians must rely upon online information, as printed material is often out of date before leaving the mailroom. So, the paradoxical question is why, when we train individual clinicians to incorporate new evidence and procedures, is it so hard to overcome organizational, political, and financial barriers that limit their ability to implement such change in practice?