Habit Formation to Enhance Implementation of Evidence-based Practice

Healthcare professionals often report strong intentions to use evidence-based practices to improve patient care, but intention does not always translate into action. Habits, automatic behaviors generated through repeated cue-behavior associations, may help address the intention-behavior gap and enhance adoption of evidence-based practices. As habits form, behavior control shifts from being internally guided to being triggered by external context cues, which can support making the use of evidence-based practice more routine. Despite calls to integrate habit formation in implementation science, habits have not yet been fully leveraged to select and specify implementation strategies. We argue that habits can be explicitly planned for with targeted cues, behavior routines, and rewards to support healthcare professionals in adopting evidence-based practices. We outline core elements of habit formation and provide case examples to illustrate how habit techniques can be used to catalyze implementation in healthcare.