The CauseHealth Series: Chapter 8 - Above and Beyond Statistical Evidence. Why Stories Matter for Clinical Decisions and Shared Decision Making with Matthew Low

The Words Matter Podcast with Oliver Thomson

Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast.

So we continue our exploration of the CauseHealth book (download for FREE here), via this CauseHealth Series, and we have reached the midway point. In this episode I’m speaking with Matthew Low about his Chapter 8 titled Above and Beyond Statistical Evidence. Why Stories Matter for Clinical Decisions and Shared Decision Making (read Chapter 8 here).

Matthew is a Consultant Physiotherapist in the south of England, and is a Visiting Associate at the Orthopaedic Research Institute at Bournemouth University. Many of you will be aware of Matt’s excellent writing and thinking (see here, here and here), and he’s been on this podcast twice previously in episodes 7 (here) and 10 (here) about evidence, practice and knowledge.

In this episode we talk about;

1. Matt’s journey into dispositonalism and CauseHealth.
2. EBM in context of MSK practice and how has it shaped and impacted his practice.
3. We talk about how a dispositionalist view of causation can frame the clinical questions and problems within MSK care.
4. We talk about the role of clinical judgement; can we have too much? And who wins in a fight, evidence or judgement? And what to think and to do when these knowledge domains collide.
5. We talk about stories OR statistics…or stories AND statistics, and how both forms of evidence can complement each other to give a vivid portrayal of the individual person and their story.
6. We talk about the co-construction stories as a way of mutually identifying dispositions with the person
7. And we talk about the practical/clinical consequences of adopting a dispositionalist perception on causation.

As expected, this was another hugely satisfying and insightful conversation with Matt, he has so much to offer on causality, evidence and person-centred care. His vast clinical experience, means that his perspective is very much ‘from the trenches’, making the theory all the more accessible and usable for clinicians. So please enjoy, and Matt will definitely be back in a Words Matter Quadrilogy later this year, so stand by.

Find Matthew on twitter via @MattLowPT

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