Topic > Importance of Diagnostic Decision Making in Medicine

Research on problem solving was initially aimed at describing physicians' reasoning to improve instructions and as a hypothesis testing process. Solutions to difficult diagnostic problems were hypothesized early in the diagnostic process and used for further data collection (Elstein & Schwarz, 2002). Problem solving consists of four strategies; hypothesis testing, pattern recognition, specific instances, and general prototypes. The choice of strategy for solving diagnostic problems depends on the perceived difficulty of the case and knowledge of the content and strategy (Elstein & Schwarz, 2002). Decision making involves a lot of information typically perceived and evaluated in order to produce the best single choice (Wickens et al., 2013). Availability occurs when people tend to overestimate the frequency of vivid or easily remembered events and underestimate the frequency of events that are very ordinary or difficult to remember as it refers to the ease with which instances or events can be brought to mind (Wickens et al., 2013). Representativeness refers to estimating the probability of disease by judging how similar a case is to a diagnostic category or prototype (Elstein & Schwarz, 2002). Of course, bias also plays a role: Confirmation bias describes people's tendency to see