Presented By: Pat Croskerry, M.D., Ph.D., FRCP December 2015
December 2015

The most important thing we do in healthcare is make decisions about patients — importantly about their diagnosis and management. However, decades of cognitive science research has shown conclusively that normal operations of the human brain are biased. Some of these biases are actually beneficial — they provide us with mental shortcuts to accomplish much of the daily routine in our lives. But others may lead to catastrophic outcomes. In this webinar, we look at the two basic processes of decision making to see how each may serve us best. We examine how prevailing conditions in the healthcare environment may influence the quality of decision making. We also examine the process of mindfulness in care and other strategies that allow us to mitigate the negative impact of bias on our decision making.

Objectives:

• Review the overall relevance of an understanding of decision making in healthcare
• Describe the dual process model to examine how the brain makes decisions
• Review strategies to detect and mitigate the negative impact of bias