title: Turning anecdotes into data--the critical incident technique.
abstract: This article describes the critical incident technique and offers practical guidance on how the technique can be used to investigate dilemmas in medicine. It extols the particular virtue of this research method for general practice that it can be used to exploit the natural tendency of doctors to tell anecdotes. How the principles of the technique relate to significant event analysis, a form of medical audit, is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Practice, Rusholme Health Centre, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Bradley
mesh_terms: D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D003479:Curriculum; D003625:Data Collection; D003657:Decision Making; D004501:Education, Medical; D006801:Humans; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012107:Research Design