Research Guides: Mindfulness in Medicine @UMKC: How Doctors Think/Uncertainty

How Drs Think/Uncertainty

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart....live in the question.” -Rilke

Describe how clinical practice includes both analytic and non-analytic thinking
Describe how habitual patterns of thinking (biases, heuristics, expectations, etc.) can lead to diagnostic errors, misperceptions, and poor decisions
Demonstrate ways of becoming more aware of your mental processes to practice with greater clarity and avoid errors
Define settings, contexts, and triggers that lead to distorted thinking due to biases, heuristics, affect, and social norms

Borrell-Carrio F & Epstein RM (2004). “Preventing errors in clinical practice: a call for self-awareness.” Ann Fam Med, 2(4): 310-316.
Cox V. “A story of wrong perceptions” In Chicken Soup for the Soul, editor Jack Canfield
Epstein RM (2017). “Navigating without a map.” In Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity (pp. 85-105). New York, NY: Scribner.
Groopman J. What’s the trouble? The New Yorker 1-29-2007
Krasner M. “Physician, Know Thyself: Review of How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, Shambala Sun, 2007, Vol. 16, No. 1, 81-86.
Redelmeier DA. “Improving patient care. The cognitive psychology of missed diagnoses.” Ann Intern Med. 2005;142(2):115-20.
Sibinga EM & Wu AW (2010). “Clinician mindfulness and patient safety.” JAMA, 304(22): 2532-2533