With respect to the omnipresent diagnosis and treatment algorithms, Groopman describes a case to illustrate how important it is that physicians apply algorithms within the context of the specific patient being treated. The author makes an apt point when explaining that even with the myriad technologies available, language is still the foundation of clinical medicine. This prevents the physician from viewing the patient’s clinical picture de novo. Finally, the attribution error is the tendency to fit people into stereotyped roles based on one’s past experiences or what one might have been told by colleagues. The anchoring error is the tendency to seize on an initial symptom or finding and allowing this to cloud clinical judgment. This leads the physician to see similar cases in the same way, often while ignoring important differences between them. The availability error is the tendency to apply what one commonly experiences or sees when making a diagnosis of a new patient.
Groopman points out that while finding something might be satisfactory, not finding everything is suboptimal. Satisfaction of search is the tendency to stop searching for a diagnosis once one has found something of clinical interest, even though this might not be central to the presenting problem. When considering whether the patient should be treated or not, this bias leads one toward treatment, as it is-wrongly-believed that one is therefore “doing something” for the patient.
In fact, being more aware of these potential cognitive traps might well prevent one from making many of the clinical errors described in this book.Ī commission bias is the tendency toward action rather than inaction. By doing this, Groopman highlights several types of common cognitive errors made by physicians. He also presents cases in which difficult diagnoses were arrived at correctly, drawing attention to the important differences between the cognitive processes at play in each case and the resultant outcome. In each chapter, Groopman presents cases in which particular diagnoses were arrived at in error, often by separate, but not always independently thinking, physicians. He approaches this in a case-based manner, by way of analyzing mistakes made in diagnosis and treatment. In How Doctors Think, Groopman analyzes how physicians come to make diagnostic and treatment decisions, and how this process can be improved upon. WEAKNESSES Does not quantify the consequences of errors made in clinical decision makingĪUDIENCE Medical professionals and the general public STRENGTHS Addresses an important but often overlooked topic
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