Category: Misc
Keywords: Errors (PubMed Search)
Posted: 4/14/2009 by Rob Rogers, MD
(Updated: 11/2/2024)
Click here to contact Rob Rogers, MD
Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Department
Believe it or not, there is actually a field of medicine that is devoted to examining how physicians think in clinical practice, i.e. how we make diagnostic decisions. Much of the work on this has been done by Pat Croskerry. This is extremely important for emergency physicians because we frequently have to make split second medical decisions with little to no information.
Why is this so important? If we can understand where errors are made, we can actually improve our own diagnostic skills and reduce our errors rates.
Some key pitfalls that we all fall victim to:
Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
Pat Croskerry