title: Understanding Decision Making in Critical Care.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Human decision making involves the deliberate formulation of hypotheses and plans as well as the use of subconscious means of judging probability, likely outcome, and proper action.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  There is a growing recognition that intuitive strategies such as use of heuristics and pattern recognition described in other industries are applicable to high-acuity environments in medicine. Despite the applicability of theories of cognition to the intensive care unit, a discussion of decision-making strategies is currently absent in the critical care literature.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  This article provides an overview of known cognitive strategies, as well as a synthesis of their use in critical care. By understanding the ways by which humans formulate diagnoses and make critical decisions, we may be able to minimize errors in our own judgments as well as build training activities around known strengths and limitations of cognition.
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesia, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California USA geoffL@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Geoffrey K
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Lighthall
authors.affiliation: Fellow, Critical Care Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California USA.
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vazquez-Guillamet
mesh_terms: D003422:Critical Care / Q000379:methods*; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans
keywords: Critical care; Diagnosis; Heuristics; Intuition; Medical decision making