After two years of work and many rewrites, I finally published my paper on clinical decision-making. The paper integrates many of the decision-making theories and principles developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky with the clinical decision-making strategies developed by Gerd Gigerenzer and Pat Croskerry. While those great minds have taught us much about decision-making, heuristics, and bias, those topics have barely been explored in PT.
In this perspective, I discuss the use of heuristics and bias in physical therapy practice. Here are the highlights I put together for the journal:
Intuition and heuristics guide clinical decision-making in physical therapy.
System 2 thinking and executive override are vital for novice clinicians.
Busy clinical environments, sleep deprivation, and fatigue impairs decision-making.
Experts can rely more on intuition and less on clinical information than novices.
External perspectives from mentors and colleagues can help reduce personal bias.
The original version dives deep into rationality but I had to cut content for the final version. If you are interested in the original draft or are unable to find a full-text copy of the published perspective, send me an email.