#3 Translating Research to the Clinic and Questioning the Use of Manual Therapy | Lars Avemarie

Summary:
In this episode, physiotherapist and researcher Dale Whelehan shares his research and thoughts on sleep and heuristics. Dale is a Ph.D. candidate in Surgical Performance with a particular focus on the objectivity of performance, the influence of sleep deprivation, clinical decision making, and fatigue risk management approaches to enhance performance. We discuss how bias and heuristics can aid clinicians when used correctly. However, when sleep deprivation enters the equation, critical thinking Is heavily Influenced.


Topics Covered:
0:00 - Introducing Dale Whelehan
3:43 - Start of the interview
4:50 - Dale introduces himself and discusses his background on sleep research
6:26 - Describing Physiotalk Tweet Chats
7:35 - Assessing sleep and modifiable factors for clinical decision making
9:22 - Lack of heuristics research in physiotherapy
11:18 - How do we best educate clinicians in biases and heuristics?
13:55 - Differentiating between novice and expert
16:21 - What are heuristics and how are they beneficial?
20:03 - Examples of common heuristics in clinical practice

• Anchoring
• Availability
• Commission
• Omission
• Bandwagon
• Overconfidence
• Dunning-Kruger effect
• Representativeness

25:50 - Sunk-cost fallacy
27:06 - Biases to be aware of as a novice clinician
30:10 - How sleep influences our clinical decision making
33:58 - Sleep quality vs. sleep duration
36:05 - What should clinicians do if they are sleep deprived?
39:35 - How do we maintain work-life balance
41:10 - Building resilience in clinicians
42:48 - Integrating sleep education into clinical practice
45:33 - Impact of sleep deprivation on emotional regulation
47:25 - Cultural influences on sleep deprivation
49:50 - The inevitability of error making
52:40 - Looking at the social determinants of health
54:42 - Influence of sociocultural issues on bias
57:42 - Closing thoughts


Quotes:

“Without biases, one couldn’t function. We wouldn’t know what we like and what we don’t like without our biases. We would be in a constant philosophical dilemma.”

“When one is sleep-deprived, they lose the ability to self-regulate. They lose their ability to appropriately use clinical decision-making models.”

“We Talk about the concept of resilience in healthcare but we don’t talk about the concept of striving"

“The highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others” (Dale quoting Socrates)

Learn more about Dale:
Twitter, LinkedIn, Physioplus

Dale's Research:
Research Gate 

Books mentioned:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Amazon Affiliate Link)
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (Amazon Affiliate Link)

People mentioned:
Intro music by Quentin Walston: https://quentinwalston.com/
Physiotalk