Clinical reasoning can be susceptible to cognitive biases during patient diagnosis, leading to adverse events. Anchoring bias is a cognitive bias, which in medical decision making is the tendency to fix onto features of a patient case particularly early in the diagnostic process and then failing to adequately adjust from this view. A review of ED case reports of missed or delayed diagnosis was conducted to identify potential anchoring on initial diagnoses or patient features.

Learning Objective: To formulate an approach to study the role anchoring bias plays in diagnostic errors in emergency care settings.

Authors:

Roni Matin (Presenter)
University of Texas Health Sciences

Amy Franklin, University of Texas Health Sciences

Presentation Materials:

• Abstract/Manuscript - 1