RT Book, Section
A1 Wilson, Mark C.
A1 Henderson, Mark C.
A1 Smetana, Gerald W.
A2 Henderson, Mark C.
A2 Tierney, Lawrence M.
A2 Smetana, Gerald W.
SR Print(0)
ID 56850503
T1 Chapter 5. Evidence-Based Clinical Decision Making
T2 The Patient History: An Evidence-Based Approach to Differential Diagnosis, 2e
YR 2012
FD 2012
PB The McGraw-Hill Companies
PP New York, NY
SN 978-0-07-162494-7
LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=56850503
RD 2024/04/20
AB Clinical  decision  making  is  laced  with  uncertainty,  and  efficiently  sorting  out  an  underlying  diagnosis  as  the  cause  of  a  patient's  ailment  can  be  difficult.  Novice  clinicians  may  attempt  a  stepwise  assessment  of  all  possible  explanations  for  a  patient's  concerns  until  finally  arriving  at  the  diagnosis.  More  seasoned  clinicians  make  use  of  extensive  clinical  experience,  pattern  recognition,  and  a  range  of  approaches  to  save  patients  from  the  potential  delays,  risks,  and  costs  of  inefficient  diagnostic  strategies.  The  wisest  clinicians  seek  out  best  evidence  from  clinical  research  and  use  it  to  complement  their  clinical  experiences.1  In  this  chapter,  we  introduce  the  concepts  of  differential  diagnosis,  pretest  probabilities,  and  test  performance  characteristics  to  bolster  our  abilities  to  make  diagnoses.