Recently, I was mulling over the public reaction to comments about ‘low-value care’ in medicine when I came across Professor Stephen Leeder’s eloquent article ‘‘Low-value care’: Why do some doctors persist despite the evidence?’

Professor Leeder had made pertinent comments about the various motivations for holding on to practices that are not supported by strong evidence.

These range from the need to adapt care to individual patients and the conflict between a guideline and a clinician’s individual experience, to the inherent conservatism of clinical practice.

The aspect that surprised me in the reactions I saw from many in the medical community, however, concerned a misunderstanding of what the term ‘low-value care’ refers to.