Cognitive Bias in Clinical Medicine

Eoin D O’Sullivan (Lead / Corresponding author), Susie Schofield

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

211 Citations (Scopus)
5325 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Cognitive bias is increasingly recognised as an important source of medical error, and is both ubiquitous across clinical practice yet incompletely understood. This increasing awareness of bias has resulted in a surge in clinical and psychological research in the area and development of various ‘debiasing strategies’. This paper describes the potential origins of bias based on ‘dual process thinking’, discusses and illustrates a number of the important biases that occur in clinical practice, and considers potential strategies that might be used to mitigate their effect.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)225-231
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
Volume48
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2018

Keywords

  • Cognitive bias
  • Diagnostic error
  • Heuristics
  • Interventions

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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