Implementation from a habit perspective

In their efforts to provide evidence-based care, health care professionals engage in a range of clinical behaviours. Their clinical actions are characteristically performed repeatedly, in the same physical locations with the same colleagues and patients, under constant time pressure and competing demands. This repetition under pressure in a stable setting provides ideal circumstances for creating contingencies between physical and social cues and clinical actions. Health care professional behaviour provides an ideal setting in which to advance theory, methods and interventions to better understand habit formation and habit reversal. Contemporary theoretical and methodological development in the psychology of habit has begun to be applied to understand and promote forming, breaking and replacing habitual behaviour among health care professionals. This chapter highlights key theoretical approaches, methods and intervention techniques that have been applied to conceptualize, measure, develop and break habit and automaticity in health care professionals. These insights have the potential to synergistically contribute novel perspectives to the wider habit literature.