The concept of work-life balance implies that work is bad and life is good; it suggests that work and life are two different entities that need to be strictly separated and kept at a constant value. I believe there is a misconception that less work equals more happiness. Work is seen as a mechanism for…

Todays blog looks at Power and Influence and how this impacts on evidence based medicine (EBM). I believe that discussing how power interacts with EBM is uncomfortable, as it suggests inequality which I think makes this a particular challenge for those of us who believe in Equity and Fairness. My personal experience which has spanned…

Because justice and fairness sit at the heart of my personal values, I find it important to explore how these principles influence the way we think about healthcare. Co-operation has been central to human survival, shaping the social norms that guide our everyday lives. From these norms emerge the frameworks through which societies define justice.…

In moving from our traditional model of evidence based medicine (EBM) to Personalised Medicine (PM) and ensuring that greater participation and inclusion is built into our service designs, we are going to have to move away from the conventional statistical analysis to a new way of generating measures to identify best practice. We know that…

Healthcare extends beyond physical illness to include mental, social and spiritual wellbeing. While genetics play a role, they account for only a small proportion of overall health outcomes. Far more influential are personal behaviours, social conditions and the environments in which people live, the wider ecosystem that truly shapes health. I love new learning so…

The evidence base for health and care needs to integrate psychology, sociology, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, artificial intelligence and philosophy, alongside traditional clinical practice taking into account culture, history and our environment. Crucially, while processes and metrics work for predictable systems, they fall short in the face of human behaviour, complexity and uncertainty. In these…

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has transformed healthcare. It replaced intuition and tradition with research, data and measurable outcomes. It helped standardise care, reduce unsafe variation and improve survival in many conditions. Few clinicians would argue against its importance. But an uncomfortable question is beginning to surface: has our devotion to evidence-based medicine also created blind spots…

We have built modern medicine on evidence. But what happens when the evidence doesn’t fit the person in front of us? Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) shaped my training and early clinical thinking. We were taught that research, data, and guidelines provided the safest route to good care. Follow the evidence, reduce variation, improve outcomes. It offered…

We have discussed culture, creating a vision, bringing together a team but what is it that can catch us out? Most of us, feel “If only I work harder, learn more and perfect our skills, with passion and positivity, I can be an expert and will feel good enough.” We need to shift from being…

You can change an organisation to adopt a new culture changing people in organisations to be cultural architects and you can create whole systems change through culture. We know that this is achievable as we watch social influencers, technology companies and people adopting their latest craze and we see transforming communities across the world. They…