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"Making a Diagnosis: New Models for Old Presented by Patrick Croskerry, MD, PhD Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, and Division of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie Universit"

Having helped lift the veil on one of the last taboos in Canadian medicine, Dr. Pat Croskerry has concluded critical thinking is the key to reducing the large numbers of medical mistakes made each year, especially in diagnosis.

" We stress the importance of ambient and contextual influences on the quality of individual decision making and the need to address factors known to impair calibration of the decision maker. We also emphasise the importance of introducing these concepts and corollary development of training in critical thinking in the undergraduate level in medical education. "

Diagnosis is the foundation of medicine. Effective treatment cannot begin until an accurate diagnosis has been made. Diagnostic reasoning is a critical aspect of clinical performance. It is vulnerable to a variety of failings, the most prevalent arising through cognitive and affective influences. The impact of diagnostic failure on patient safety does not appear to have been fully recognized. Ideally, all information used in diagnostic reasoning is objective and all thinking is logical and valid, but these conditions are not always met.