A Review Of The Most Common Physician Errors In Thinking And Judgement
In my recent review of Peter Palmieri’s book Suffer the Children I said I would later try to cover some of the many other important issues he brings up. One of the themes in the book is the process of critical thinking and the various cognitive traps doctors fall into. I will address some of them here. This is not meant to be systematic or comprehensive, but rather a miscellany of things to think about. Some of these overlap.
Diagnostic fetishes
Everything is attributed to a pet diagnosis. Palmieri gives the example of a colleague of his who thinks everything from septic shock to behavior disorders are due to low levels of HDL, which he treats with high doses of niacin. There is a tendency to widen the criteria so that any collection of symptoms can be seen as evidence of the condition. If the hole is big enough, pegs of any shape will fit through. Some doctors attribute everything to food allergies, depression, environmental sensitivities, hormone imbalances, and other favorite diagnoses. CAM is notorious for claiming to have found the one true cause of all disease (subluxations, an imbalance of qi, etc.).
Favorite treatment.
One of his partners put dozens of infants on Cisapride to treat the spitting up that most normal babies do. Even after the manufacturer sent out a warning letter about babies who had died from irregular heart rhythms, she continued using it. Eventually the drug was recalled.
Another colleague prescribed cholestyramine for every patient with diarrhea: not only ineffective but highly illogical.
When I was an intern on the Internal Medicine rotation, the attending physician noticed one day that every single patient on our service was getting guaifenesin. We thought we had ordered it for valid reasons, but I doubt whether everyone benefited from it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
