What makes diagnosis hard?
This essay uses a case study to explore some of the reasons why understanding failures associated with diagnosis seems to have lagged behind the attention and understanding directed at failures in other aspects of healthcare (e.g., wrong patient/procedure, medication misadministration, etc). The goal is not to pose an alternative to many of the current ideas about problems in diagnosis, but rather to enrich the discussions.
Wears
Robert L
RL
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Florida Health Science Center, Jacksonville, FL 32209, USA. wears@ufl.edu
D003071:Cognition; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D003951:Diagnostic Errors; D005221:Fatigue / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D035501:Uncertainty; D055815:Young Adult