How do new doctors prescribe insulin? Qualitative exploration of the complexity of everyday practice and implications for medical education.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

(1) Analyse in depth an exemplar safety-critical task required of newly qualified doctors (prescribing insulin) and (2) Provide transferable insights into how undergraduate education could better educate medical students to meet the demands of practice when they become postgraduate trainees.

Design

Document analysis of doctors' reported experiences of insulin prescribing, an everyday task that has an emergent logic of practice and harms not just patients but (psychologically) new doctors. Application of third-generation (social emergence) complexity theory to explore why practice can be 'mutually unsafe'.

Settings

A system of care comprising all five Northern Irish (UK) Health and Social Care Trusts, which together provide healthcare to a population of near

SUBMITTER: Dornan T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12458796 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature