Competence and Excellence in Medical Practice
And the cognitive bias of the week is…..ZEBRA RETREAT! In my previous blogs I’ve been exploring the importance of generating a broad differential list early in the diagnostic process. This is particularly important to mitigate against biases such as premature closure and affective bias (‘gut-feel’). If we have generated a good differential list, it should […]
Retreat! It’s a zebra… Read More »
It’s day 5 of the Boxing Day test. You have great tickets and are catching up with some old mates. You’ve been to the MCG many times before but not in the last few years. You wake up late – too late to catch the train, so you jump in your car. On autopilot you
Clinical reasoning and the perfect CAATCHHH Read More »
Welcome to this week’s clinical reasoning bias – “The Bandwagon effect”: “the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same” Now I don’t even need to try and think of a clinical case to demonstrate this, as there as so many examples in the medical literature, but perhaps
Jumping on the Bandwagon Read More »
As a senior GP registrar about to sit exams I felt that I was brimming with knowledge. So why then was I still second guessing myself about certain patients at the end of the day? I spoke with my learned supervisor about this – he’s been in the game a long time and has a much
How much risk do you tolerate? Read More »
How do we know what we don’t know, especially if we’re sure that we know enough? Overconfidence when making clinical decisions is common in doctors, and particularly as we become more experienced clinicians. As GPs we see the most undifferentiated of presentations and we use one of two Systems in our brain to define the
Removing your clinical blinkers Read More »
So last weeks blog focused on anchoring bias. Remember Phillip with the ‘flu’ who unfortunately ended up with meningococcal meningitis? This week we are going to explore Information and availability bias. Information bias is the belief that the more information you can gather to support your decision the better. Now it is fair to say
When you can’t see the forest for the trees… Read More »
Mr Brown drives the community bus daily from the aged care home to the local RSL. He has come to see you reluctantly as he has welcomed the magical 75th birthday and received a reminder that he requires a license medical. ‘But Doc, I’ve been driving for 60 years and never had an accident, surely
Is it time for a ‘clinical’ vision check? Read More »
So two weeks ago my washing machine started leaking. In the style of a GP problem solver I : – checked if the adjacent beer fridge was leaking; – checked the inlet and outlet hoses; – checked the washing machine valves; – checked the dog hadn’t wee’d on the floor again; – read the troubleshooting
It all comes out in the wash…..or does it? Read More »
AKT and KFP study plan= Last five years of Check, AFP and Murtagh read back to back three times. NO! NO! NO! Unfortunately I hear this preparation method all the time. The regurgitation of clinical knowledge is unfortunately not the key to competence as a GP – if this was so, then a robot could
Flicking the switch on the AKT & KFP Read More »
With just over three weeks to go until the big day, it’s time for some last brief tips on OSCE technique – in an acronym of course to help you remember!
OSCE Alphabet Soup Read More »