Clinical Decision Making Flashcards
What is Confirmatory Bias?
The tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, often leading to errors
What is the Sunk Cost Fallacy?
Rationally, the only factor affecting future action should be future cost/benefit ratio BUT humans do not always act rationally
Often, the more we have invested in the past, the more we are prepared to invest in a problem in the future
What is Bayes’ theorem and what is it used for?
It is a theorem that measures conditional probability
It is used in screening that involves false positives and false negatives such as mammograms/breast cancer
State some strategies for improving clinical decision-making.
Recognise that heuristics and biases may be affecting our judgement even though we may not be conscious of them
Counteract the effect of top-down processing by generating alternative theories and looking for evidence to support them rather than just looking for evidence that confirms our preferred theory (confirmatory bias)
Understand and employ statistical principles e.g. Bayes’ theorem
Use of algorithms and decision support systems
What is Heuristics?
Any approach to problem-solving, learning or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals.
What is Availability Heuristics?
Probabilities are estimated on the basis of how easily and/or vividly they can be called to mind.
In a study, the majority of participants stated that there are more words in the English language that begin with ‘K’ than words in which ‘K’ is the 3rd letter (this is wrong)
People tend to heavily weigh their judgements toward more recent information
What is Representative Heuristics?
Subjective probability that a stimulus belongs to a particular class based on how ‘typical’ of that class it appears to be (regardless of base rate probability)
Whilst often very useful in everyday life, it can also result in neglect of relevant base rates and other errors
EXAMPLE: being offered melon because you’re Asian