Clinical reasoning errors

Question	Answer
Anchoring	Tendency to lock onto salient features in the patient's presentation too early in the clinical reasoning process - failing to adjust this initial impression in the light of new information.
Ascertainment bias	When a nurses thinking is shaped by prior assumptions and preconceptions. E.g. ageism, stereotyping
Confirmation bias	Tendency to look for confirming evidence to support a nursing diagnosis rather than look for disconfirming evidence to refute it
Diagnostic momentum	Once a patient has a label - the tendency for the label to remain and other possibilities to be excluded
Fundamental attribution error	The tendency to be judgemental and to blame patients for their illnesses rather than examine the circumstances responsible
Overconfidence bias	The tendency to believe we know more than we know - tendency to act on incomplete information
Premature closure	Tendency to accept a nursing diagnosis without sufficient evidence and before it has been fully verified
Psych-out error	People with mental illness may fail to have comorbidities identified - or - medical issues are misdiagnosed as psychiatric conditions
Unpacking principle	Failure to collect and unpack all of the relevant cues and consider differential diagnoses

Resource summary

	Created by Em J almost 6 years ago