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Frontiers of Medicine >> 2012, Volume 6, Issue 1 doi: 10.1007/s11684-012-0183-9
Clinical decision-making by the emergency department resident physicians for critically ill patients
Department of Emergency Medicine, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China.
Abstract
The application of main methodologies for clinical decision-making by residents in emergency medical practice was assessed, and issues in this area were investigated. The treatments provided to 2 611 critical patients by the Peking Union Medical College Hospital of were analyzed by independent investigators who evaluated the main clinical decision-making processes applied by the hospital residents. The application of decision-making strategies by PG1 and PG3 groups, which means the residents in first year and the third year, were compared. The patients were treated according to pattern recognition (43.0%), hypothetico-deductive reasoning (23.4%), event-driven models (19.3%), and rule-using algorithms (5.9%). A significant difference was found between PG1 and PG3 groups (χ2=498.01, P<0.001). Pattern recognition and hypothetic-deductive methods were the most common techniques applied by emergency physicians in evaluating critically ill patients. The decision-making processes applied by junior and senior residents were significantly different, although neither group adequately applied rule-using algorithms. Inclusion of clinical decision-making in medical curricula is needed to improve decision-making in critical care.
Keywords
clinical decision-making ; emergency medicine ; critically ill patient ; resident ; methodology
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