Changing clinicians' habits: is this the hidden challenge to increasing best practices?

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the concept of habit as an under-explored, but critically important factor that might help explain the lack of uptake of new, scientifically sound practices by rehabilitation clinicians.

The complexity relating to being a scholarly practitioner is first presented. The transtheoretical model of behaviour change, developed to better understand behaviour change such as stopping a 'bad' habit or implementing a 'good' one for health improvement purposes, is used to foster reflection on factors involved in uptake of best practices in rehabilitation. To illustrate simply the different scenarios relating to uptake of best practices, such as the use of a standardised tool over a home-grown one, two well known approaches to assessment (use of thermometer versus hand on forehead) that could be used to assess the same construct (body temperature) are contrasted.

As rehabilitation clinicians, we are potentially blocked in our uptake of best practices by our habits. Although habits are often comfortable, and change is less so, we need to move away from our comfort zone if we are to adopt best practices.

Given the extensive literature suggesting that there are major gaps between best practice and actual practices, it behoves us to explore the impact of habits to a greater extent.