Serious question: Why do doctors change their practice so much based on one case study? Surely, even if there isn't any malice, a doctor can make a mistake?
Serious question: Why do doctors change their practice so much based on one case study? Surely, even if there isn't any malice, a doctor can make a mistake?
I wondered this too after reading the original New Yorker article a few weeks back and was quite surprised.
However, the article also made me think that once a practice is adopted it’s hard for it to change even if the evidence support changing. (Which is how I expected it to be from the outside)
I figured there was some context that I was missing as to why some things are quicker to adopt and others less so. Maybe because adopting this change was seen to be “saving” lives by being more cautious about the how medicines and feeding interact - and reverting the change is “risky” in case there is truth to it.
Case studies are used in medical decision making only when there is no better form of evidence available, or there is a gap in current evidence. It is not the first place to look
But in this case, doctors across the US and Canada stopped giving pain meds to new mothers because of this one study! Even if the study didn't get retroactively declared to be fictional, that seems like an extreme level of decision-making over one case.
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