ABSTRACT
Physicians have continually demonstrated poor compliance with basic handwashing protocols, while infection control remains a top priority for hospitals. The spread of a new idea or technology is a highly social activity, and it is one of the most studied areas of social science. The tipping point is the level of adoption at which the social pressure to adopt outweighs the perceived barriers to adoption; once the tipping point is reached, the rate of adoption rapidly increases. Early adopters make up approximately 13.5% of the population and laggards 16%. Innovators are the smallest portion of the population, representing only about 2.5% of the population. The linear nature of the adoption curve means that adoption by physicians takes much longer than classic diffusion theory would predict. Anesthesia was the perfect innovation to diffuse through a group whose adoption is dominated by confidence in success.
