Why patients disruptive behaviours impair diagnostic reasoning: a randomised experiment

Conclusions
Difficult patients’ behaviours induce doctors to make diagnostic errors, apparently because doctors spend part of their mental resources on dealing with the difficult patients’ behaviours, impeding adequate processing of clinical findings. Efforts should be made to increase doctors’ awareness of the potential negative influence of difficult patients’ behaviours on diagnostic decisions and their ability to counteract such influence.

Source: BMJ Quality and Safety - December 13, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Mamede, S., Van Gog, T., Schuit, S. C. E., Van den Berge, K., Van Daele, P. L. A., Bueving, H., Van der Zee, T., Van den Broek, W. W., Van Saase, J. L. C. M., Schmidt, H. G. Tags: Press releases Original research Source Type: research