Bias in the ER
nautil.us
Bias in the ER
1–10 of 84 posts
Re: Bias in the ER
#2I wonder how much this is influenced by medical staff being overworked.
Re: Bias in the ER
#3I wonder how much this is influenced by medical staff being overworked.
I would imagine quite a bit.
also, a case of "hearing hoof prints and thinking horses, not zebras."
a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) that didn't show up on an x-ray is what would concern me. They were focused on the most common causes of the issue they had at hand, and likely with all of the information available at the time. when the new information was available, the treatment course changed. That's often how things work in emergency medicine.
Re: Bias in the ER
#4There's a book called "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman that talks about systematic bias in human heuristic thinking.
> The more easily people can call a scenario to mind, the more probable they find it.
This is practically a restatement of the "availability bias" from that book. It came to mind immediately when I saw the article's title "How can Medical Professionals Avoid Making Assumptions That Lead to Mistakes?"
The answer is probably that they can't, because they're human. One can put good processes in place, and do things like checklisting that dissuade people from making fast heuristic decisions (which we know are systematically, and predictably wrong). But people really hate stuff like that, doctors especially, and so it's an ongoing cultural battle.
Doctors in this regard are no different than software engineers, or plumbers, or any other human at work, they just get more attention when they screw up because people die.
Re: Bias in the ER
#5As a completely trivial takeaway from this, now I want to start using tissues to press elevator buttons in hospitals, and possibly bring along surface disinfecting wipes to use on them as well.
Re: Bias in the ER
#6I wonder how much this is influenced by medical staff being overworked.
I would imagine quite a bit. also, a case of "hearing hoof prints and thinking horses, not zebras." a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) that didn't show up on an x-ray is what would concern me. They were focused on the most common causes of the issue they had at hand, and likely with all of the information available at the time. when the new information was available, the treatment course changed. That's often how things…
I find it pretty surprising that a trauma center would miss a pneumo in a multi-system trauma pt...
Perhaps the only saying more common in trauma than "if you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras" is "the problem is caused by the trauma until proven otherwise".
Re: Bias in the ER
#7There's a book called "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman that talks about systematic bias in human heuristic thinking. > The more easily people can call a scenario to mind, the more probable they find it. This is practically a restatement of the "availability bias" from that book. It came to mind immediately when I saw the article's title "How can Medical Professionals Avoid Making Assumptions That Lead to M…
Well of course it brings Kahneman to mind. A good quarter of the article is a digression into Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's research, including a mention of availability bias by name ("“Consequently,” Amos and Danny wrote, “the use of the availability heuristic leads to systematic biases.”")
Re: Bias in the ER
#8As a completely trivial takeaway from this, now I want to start using tissues to press elevator buttons in hospitals, and possibly bring along surface disinfecting wipes to use on them as well.
I wonder if this is why I've seen metal buttons more often in hospital elevators than elsewhere.
Re: Bias in the ER
#9There's a book called "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman that talks about systematic bias in human heuristic thinking. > The more easily people can call a scenario to mind, the more probable they find it. This is practically a restatement of the "availability bias" from that book. It came to mind immediately when I saw the article's title "How can Medical Professionals Avoid Making Assumptions That Lead to M…
The article is an excerpt from The Undoing Project[0] which is about the authors of Thinking Fast and Slow.
[0] https://smile.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-...
Re: Bias in the ER
#10As a completely trivial takeaway from this, now I want to start using tissues to press elevator buttons in hospitals, and possibly bring along surface disinfecting wipes to use on them as well.
I wonder if this is why I've seen metal buttons more often in hospital elevators than elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect
Unfortunately, just being metal isn't enough. Most metal surfaces in hospitals are stainless steel, which can hold viable pathogens for a week or more. Silver plating would sterilize some pathogens in as little as 5 minutes.