'More than words' - interpersonal communication, cognitive bias and diagnostic errors.

Maria R. Dahm; Maureen Williams; Carmel Crock

Commentary

'More than words' - interpersonal communication, cognitive bias and diagnostic errors.

August 11, 2021

Dahm MR, Williams M, Crock C. Patient Educ Couns. 2022;105(1):252-256.

View more articles from the same authors.

Cognitive biases and poor communication among providers can lead to diagnostic errors. This commentary presents the links between biases, provider communication, and diagnostic error, and proposes how patient engagement and health communication research can improve the diagnostic process.

PubMed citation

Available at

Related Resources From the Same Author(s)

More than words: patients' views on apology and disclosure when things go wrong in cancer care.

August 24, 2011

A scoping review of communication tools applicable to patients and their primary care providers after discharge from hospital.

July 14, 2021

Communication about medical errors.

February 24, 2021

The aspects of healthcare quality that are important to health professionals and patients: a qualitative study.

December 15, 2021

Patient and clinician experiences of uncertainty in the diagnostic process: current understanding and future directions.

November 10, 2021

How patients perceive a doctor's caring attitude.

September 24, 2008

Design of a safety dashboard for patients.

December 18, 2019

Can patients contribute to enhancing the safety and effectiveness of test-result follow-up? Qualitative outcomes from a health consumer workshop.

June 2, 2021

Patient generated research priorities to improve diagnostic safety: a systematic prioritization exercise.

April 5, 2023

Communication matters when it comes to adverse events: associations of adverse events during implant treatment with patients' communication quality and trust assessments.

March 15, 2023

Variation in electronic test results management and its implications for patient safety: a multisite investigation.

August 19, 2020

Engaging with ethnic minority consumers to improve safety in cancer services: a national stakeholder analysis.

May 25, 2022

Misdiagnosis and failure to diagnose in emergency care: causes and empathy as a solution.

November 11, 2020

Follow-up of abnormal screening mammograms among low-income ethnically diverse women: findings from a qualitative study.

December 8, 2008

Communicating with patients about diagnostic errors in breast cancer care: providers' attitudes, experiences, and advice

January 22, 2020

Developing critical thinking skills for delivering optimal care

July 28, 2021

Investigation of interventions to reduce nurses' medication errors in adult intensive care units: a systematic review.

October 12, 2022

The practice of medicine: understanding diagnostic error.

September 23, 2020

Handshake antimicrobial stewardship as a model to recognize and prevent diagnostic errors.

September 8, 2021

Long-term effects of teamwork training on communication and teamwork climate in ambulatory reproductive health care.

October 28, 2020

When less is more: the role of overdiagnosis and overtreatment in patient safety.

September 29, 2021

Do no harm: reaffirming the value of evidence and equipoise while minimizing cognitive bias in the COVID-19 era.

August 12, 2020

Nursing interventions to reduce medication errors in paediatrics and neonates: systematic review and meta-analysis.

December 8, 2021

Error and cognitive bias in diagnostic radiology.

April 13, 2022

Building patient trust in hospitals: a combination of hospital-related factors and health care clinician behaviors.

October 27, 2021

Perceptions of working conditions and safety concerns in community pharmacy.

September 8, 2021

Lessons from walking the medical distancing tightrope.

July 22, 2020

Complexity bias in the prevention of iatrogenic injury: why specific harms may inhibit performance.

March 16, 2022

Prevalence and characteristics of interruptions and distractions during surgical counts.

July 28, 2021

Surgical errors happen, but are learners trained to recover from them? A survey of North American surgical residents and fellows.

August 26, 2020

Adverse events among emergency department patients with cardiovascular conditions: a multicenter study.

March 10, 2021

Communication failures contributing to patient injury in anaesthesia malpractice claims.

September 1, 2021

Misdiagnosis of heart failure: a systematic review of the literature.

July 28, 2021

Oncologic errors in diagnostic radiology: a 10-year analysis based on medical malpractice claims.

November 10, 2021

A blinded, prospective study of error detection during physician chart rounds in radiation oncology.

October 14, 2020

The Psychological Safety Scale of the Safety, Communication, Operational, Reliability, and Engagement (SCORE) survey: a brief, diagnostic, and actionable metric for the ability to speak up in healthcare settings.

September 14, 2022

Pediatric musculoskeletal radiographs: anatomy and fractures prone to diagnostic error among emergency physicians.

August 3, 2022

Implementing universal suicide risk screening in a pediatric hospital.

August 18, 2021

COVID-19: making the right diagnosis.

August 5, 2020

Developing the Safer Dx Checklist of Ten Safety Recommendations for Health Care Organizations to address diagnostic errors.

October 12, 2022

A novel study of situational awareness among out-of-hospital providers during an online clinical simulation.

October 5, 2022

Safety checklists for emergency response driving and patient transport: experiences from emergency medical services.

July 7, 2021

Reducing surgical specimen errors through multidisciplinary quality improvement.

June 16, 2021

Time out! Rethinking surgical safety: more than just a checklist.

April 28, 2021

Pediatric transport safety collaborative: adverse events with parental presence during pediatric critical care transport.

November 10, 2021

Cognitive bias impact on management of postoperative complications, medical error, and standard of care.

November 4, 2020

ACGME 2011 duty hours restrictions and their effects on surgical residency training and patients outcomes: a systematic review.

July 14, 2021

A narrative review of strategies to increase patient safety event reporting by residents.

September 30, 2020

Prompting rounding teams to address a daily best practice checklist in a pediatric intensive care unit.

August 14, 2019

Quality and safety: learning from the past and (re)imagining the future.

March 29, 2023

"It's a big part of being good surgeons": surgical trainees' perceptions of error recovery in the operating room.

July 28, 2021

Diagnostic trajectories in primary care at 12 months: an observational cohort study.

June 15, 2022

Medication errors in overweight and obese pediatric patients: a systematic review.

February 9, 2022

Improving diagnostic performance through feedback: the Diagnosis Learning Cycle.

September 1, 2021

Harnessing event report data to identify diagnostic error during the COVID-19 pandemic.

December 15, 2021

Root cause analysis of adverse events involving opioid overdoses in the Veterans Health Administration.

June 23, 2021

Hospital surveys by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: an analysis of more than 34,000 deficiencies.

June 2, 2021

Intervention study for the reduction of medication errors in elderly trauma patients.

September 2, 2020

Formalizing the hidden curriculum of performance enhancing errors.

March 22, 2023

Can decision support combat incompleteness and bias in routine primary care data?

April 7, 2021

Pharmacist-led intervention on the reduction of inappropriate medication use in patients with heart failure: a systematic review of randomized trials and non-randomized intervention studies.

August 18, 2021

Call to action: addressing pediatric fall safety in ambulatory environments.

December 1, 2021

A learning health system agenda for organizational approaches to enhancing occupational well-being among clinicians.

May 25, 2022

Beyond service quality: the mediating role of patient safety perceptions in the patient experience–satisfaction relationship.

October 12, 2011

How to mitigate the effects of cognitive biases during patient safety incident investigations.

September 28, 2022

Wrong administration route of medications in the domestic setting: a review of an underestimated public health topic.

February 10, 2021

Global drug shortages due to COVID-19: impact on patient care and mitigation strategies.

July 8, 2020

How communication "failed" or "saved the day": counterfactual accounts of medical errors.

February 3, 2021

Patient and family engagement in catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) prevention: a systematic review.

July 14, 2021

Successful remediation of patient safety incidents: a tale of two medication errors.

March 2, 2011

Communication with health care workers regarding health care-associated exposure to coronavirus 2019: a checklist to facilitate disclosure.

June 24, 2020

Variation in the reporting of elective surgeries and its influence on patient safety indicators.

July 6, 2022

Hemodialysis bleeding events and deaths: an 18-year retrospective analysis of patient safety and root cause analysis reports in the Veterans Health Administration.

November 24, 2021

The influence of the availability heuristic on physicians in the emergency department.

November 17, 2021

Racism in pain medicine: we can and should do more.

July 14, 2021

Trial and error: learning from malpractice claims in childhood surgery.

August 24, 2022

Gender biases in estimation of others' pain.

April 28, 2021

Patient safety. Factors for and perceived consequences of nursing errors by nursing staff in home care services.

March 3, 2021

The Diagnostic Error Index: a quality improvement initiative to identify and measure diagnostic errors.

February 10, 2021

The effects of three consecutive 12-hour shifts on cognition, sleepiness, and domains of nursing performance in day and night shift nurses: a quasi-experimental study.

October 20, 2021

Shaping systems for better behavioral choices: lessons learned from a fatal medication error.

March 24, 2010

Facilitators and barriers of care transitions - comparing the perspectives of hospital and community healthcare staff.

June 16, 2021

A program to provide clinicians with feedback on their diagnostic performance in a learning health system.

October 28, 2020

Risk factors associated with medication ordering errors.

December 16, 2020

Undiagnosed and rare diseases in critical care: the role of diagnostic access.

July 27, 2022

Errors and error-producing conditions during a simulated, prehospital, pediatric cardiopulmonary arrest.

June 11, 2014

Using participatory design to engage physicians in the development of a provider-level performance dashboard and feedback system.

February 2, 2022

Emergency departments are higher-risk locations for wrong blood in tube errors.

September 29, 2021

Factors associated with malpractice claim payout: an analysis of closed emergency department claims.

July 13, 2022

COVID-19: to be or not to be; that is the diagnostic question.

July 8, 2020

Gender bias in risk management reports involving physicians in training - a retrospective qualitative study.

November 9, 2022

Medication dose calculation errors and other numeracy mishaps in hospitals: analysis of the nature and enablers of incident reports.

November 10, 2021

A mixed methods evaluation of medication reconciliation in the primary care setting.

March 2, 2022

Interprofessional training and communication practices among clinicians in the postoperative ICU handoff.

April 28, 2021

Crowd-sourced hospital ratings are correlated with patient satisfaction but not surgical safety.

June 9, 2021

Quality and safety in surgery: challenges and opportunities.

September 8, 2021

Flexibilization of science, cognitive biases, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

September 23, 2020

Cognitive and implicit biases in nurses' judgment and decision-making: a scoping review.

July 13, 2022

Can a targeted educational approach improve situational awareness in paramedicine during 911 emergency calls?

June 8, 2022

The implementation of communication didactics for OB/GYN residents on the disclosure of adverse perioperative events.

July 7, 2021

Related Resources

Patient Safety Innovations

Patient and Family Centered I-PASS (Family-Centered Communication Program to Reduce Medical Errors and Improve Family Experience and Communication Processes)

January 31, 2024

Responding to medical errors — implementing the modern ethical paradigm.

January 31, 2024

When mistakes multiply: how inadequate responses to medical mishaps erode trust in American medicine.

December 6, 2023

Disclosing medical errors: prioritising the needs of patients and families.

July 5, 2023

Annual Perspective

Improving Diagnostic Safety and Quality

April 26, 2023

Crisis scenarios for simulation-based nontechnical skills training for cardiac surgery teams: a national survey among cardiac anesthesiologists, cardiac surgeons, clinical perfusionists, and cardiac operating room nurses.

April 12, 2023

Patient generated research priorities to improve diagnostic safety: a systematic prioritization exercise.

April 5, 2023

Managing interruptions to improve diagnostic decision-making: strategies and recommended research agenda.

March 29, 2023

AHRQ-Funded Patient Safety Project Highlights: Improving Healthcare Safety by Engaging Patients and Families.

February 15, 2023

An evidence and consensus-based definition of second victim: a strategic topic in healthcare quality, patient safety, person-centeredness and human resource management.

February 15, 2023

Structural racism and adverse maternal health outcomes: a systematic review.

December 21, 2022

The ‘new view’ of human error. Origins, ambiguities, successes and critiques.

September 14, 2022

Patient and family involvement in serious incident investigations from the perspectives of key stakeholders: a review of the qualitative evidence.

August 17, 2022

Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Special Statement: cognitive bias and medical error in obstetrics-challenges and opportunities.

August 10, 2022

Employee silence in health care: charting new avenues for leadership and management.

August 3, 2022

Safety-II and the study of healthcare safety routines: two paths forward for research.

July 13, 2022

Adverse event reviews in healthcare: what matters to patients and their family? A qualitative study exploring the perspective of patients and family.

June 1, 2022

Identifying patients whose symptoms are underrecognized during treatment with breast radiotherapy.

May 4, 2022

Diagnostic Centers of Excellence: Partnerships to Improve Diagnostic Safety and Quality (R18).

April 20, 2022

Annual Perspective

Annual Perspective: Topics in Medication Safety

March 31, 2022

NAM Scholars in Diagnostic Excellence program.

January 31, 2022

Next of kin involvement in regulatory investigations of adverse events that caused patient death: a process evaluation.

December 22, 2021

Patient and clinician experiences of uncertainty in the diagnostic process: current understanding and future directions.

November 10, 2021

Identifying hot spots for harm and blind spots across the care pathway from patient complaints about general practice.

November 3, 2021

Use of heuristics during the clinical decision process from family care physicians in real conditions.

October 6, 2021

Do patient engagement interventions work for all patients? A systematic review and realist synthesis of interventions to enhance patient safety.

September 15, 2021

Interventions targeted at reducing diagnostic error: systematic review.

September 8, 2021

Improving diagnostic performance through feedback: the Diagnosis Learning Cycle.

September 1, 2021

Patient safety monitoring in acute care in a decentralized national health care system: conceptual framework and initial set of actionable indicators.

July 28, 2021

Assessing patients 2019 experiences with medical injury reconciliation processes: item generation for a novel survey questionnaire.

May 5, 2021

See More About The Topic

Researchers

Quality and Safety Professionals

Medicine

Diagnostic Errors

Cognitive Errors ("Mistakes")

'More than words' - interpersonal communication, cognitive bias and diagnostic errors.

Patient and Family Centered I-PASS (Family-Centered Communication Program to Reduce Medical Errors and Improve Family Experience and Communication Processes)

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

'More than words' - interpersonal communication, cognitive bias and diagnostic errors.

Patient and Family Centered I-PASS (Family-Centered Communication Program to Reduce Medical Errors and Improve Family Experience and Communication Processes)

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue Logged In

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue logged in

New Users to the PSNet site