The Visualization of Uncertainty in Clinical Diagnostic Reasoning for Pulmonary Embolism

The Visualization of Uncertainty in Clinical Diagnostic Reasoning for Pulmonary Embolism: a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Medical reasoning is a form of inquiry that examines the thought processes involved in making medical decisions. When physicians are faced with patients' symptoms or signs, their thought processes follow either direct shortcuts to suspect a diagnosis or go into a deeper and more analytic process to reach a diagnosis. The second pathway is less prone to biases and errors. This study explores whether the use of an interactive visual display of probabilities of pulmonary embolism generated from positive or negative test results will increase the adherence to evidence based guidelines in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Medical students, University of Calgary, in clerkship who finished at least 4 weeks of a block of medicine rotation at any hospital site.
• First year subspecialty or Internal Medicine residents.
• Practicing physicians in the subspecialties of Internal Medicine or Emergency Medicine.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Physicians in the subspecialty of Haematology or Respiratory