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A role for regulatory focus in explaining and combating clinical inertia
Author(s) -
Veazie Peter J.,
Qian Feng
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01491.x
Subject(s) - psychological intervention , inertia , mechanism (biology) , intervention (counseling) , focus (optics) , outcome (game theory) , medicine , psychology , economics , psychiatry , microeconomics , epistemology , philosophy , physics , classical mechanics , optics
Rationale, aims and objectives It is well established that clinical inertia generates suboptimal care in patients with chronic diseases, and policies and interventions have yet to satisfactorily address the problem. Methods This paper integrates the relevant literatures on clinical inertia and Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT) from psychology to identify an actionable explanatory mechanism. Results We review RFT and show that it provides a mechanism that may explain key provider contributions to clinical inertia. We then identify two general intervention strategies based on RFT: one that changes individual sensitivity to positive/negative outcomes and another that maintains the sensitivity to positive/negative outcome but frames how information is provided to match the sensitivity. Conclusions We conclude that RFT is a plausible explanation to guide the development of policies and interventions for mitigating clinical inertia.