5B. Clinical Decision Making

Question 1

What is confirmatory bias?

Answer 1

Tendency to search for/ interpret information that confirms your pre-existing opinion

Question 2

Name the 2 fallacies you have to learn about clinical decision making

Answer 2

Sunk Cost

Gambler’s

Question 3

Explain the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Answer 3

The more we invested in the past the more likely we are to invest in a problem in the future

Question 4

Explain the Gambler’s Fallacy

Answer 4

Mistaken belief that past events affect future ones when they are actually independent

Question 5

What are the 2 types of heuristics?

Answer 5

Availability

Representativeness

Question 6

What is availability heuristics?

Answer 6

Probabilities estimated on basis of how easily/ vividly they can be called to mind

Question 7

What sort of outcomes are typically overestimated in availability heuristics?

Answer 7

Catastrophic/ dramatic

Question 8

Give an example of availability heuristics at work in a clinical decision making setting

Answer 8

Clinician recently misses diagnosis –> more likely to then be overcautious about that diagnosis

Question 9

Describe representativeness heuristics

Answer 9

How typical of a class something seems to be and so how probably it belongs to that class

Question 10

Give an example of representativeness heuristics at work in a clinical decision making setting

Answer 10

Relatively fir -looking lean 60 year old man having chest pain and dismissing MI because he is not a typical CVD patient

Question 11

Recall 4 strategies for improving clinical decision making

Answer 11

1. Recognise heuristics/ biases
2. Generate alternative theories
3. Use statistics
4. Use algorithms