Today I offer you an exclusive preview of a forthcoming summer blockbuster few people have heard of.

Due for premiere later this year, it will be a medical drama billed to be more engaging than Terminator: Genisys and more disturbing than Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. Directed and produced by an internationally respected team from America, Canada and the UK, the drama will be called ‘Choosing Wisely’ and the star of the show will be… you.

Choosing Wisely isn’t a movie but a health campaign that promises to reveal all about an ongoing medical scandal – and a scandal in which you may unwittingly be a part.

Choosing Wisely tells the tragic tale of how today doctors routinely dole out medicines and order expensive tests unnecessarily.

A recent survey has revealed that eight out of ten GPs admit to having given patients treatments they didn’t need. Perhaps it is to appease demanding patients; perhaps it is because it feels better to do something rather than nothing, it is an increasingly costly problem – an estimated £2bn a year is wasted every year sending people for unneeded X-rays, MRI scans and blood tests or for medicines that almost certainly won’t help.

It’s not a new issue and our expectations can be partly to blame: go into any GP practice waiting room and most people will know what they want from their appointment – a test, an antibiotic, a sick note, or perhaps just an understanding ear. Sometimes we think that a modern medical test offers us the answers and the reassurance we need.

But no test is perfect and an inappropriate investigation can cause weeks of worry or even lead down a rabbit hole that goes nowhere good. In the USA, the number of people receiving MRI scans for back pain is skyrocketing – mostly just because the test exists.

As a result, rates of back surgery and painkiller injections are soaring. Surgeons want to help but evidence shows many of these treatments don’t work well – if at all. Many back pain sufferers would ultimately be better off without.

We may not have the problems they have in the United States, where almost a third of all healthcare spending is wasted on unnecessary treatments and tests.

But we have learnt from them the art of suing healthcare professionals when they get it wrong.

Right or wrong, doctors often say it is fear of missing a one-in-a-million diagnosis – and being sued for it – that causes them to order unnecessary blood tests and X-rays.

The Choosing Wisely campaign started in the USA and hopes to put the brakes on out-of-control testing and prescribing.

It will see experts try to dump treatments that probably don’t help – in the same way that routine tonsil removal for kids was abandoned. Your doctor will also try and explain the potential harm of any treatment or test. All healthcare professionals will try to only recommend what is truly necessary.

Your job is to decide whether you really need that test or tablet. Whatever you choose, just make sure you do it wisely.

n Dr Stuart Farrimond is a medical doctor and qualified secondary teacher. He worked as a hospital doctor at the RUH, Bath, before being diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2008. Forced to leave medicine, he worked as a lecturer at Wiltshire College and is now editor of Guru Magazine. You can find him on twitter@realdoctorstu and read his blog at www.realdoctorstu.com