The Role of Cognitive Biases in Medical Errors: A Review of the Literature, Concepts and Definitions

Medical errors are a significant burden on the health care system and considered as a fundamental challenge for physician, ethic and health care policymakers. Most of these errors in diagnosis are associ ated with defects in clinical reasoning. Currently, investigating and identifying cognitive factors involved in these errors are taken into consideration .

In this narrative review, the history of medical errors and cognitive biases i n clinical diagnoses will be explained. For this purpose, 400 articles published between 1900 to 2018, were extracted from four databases PubMed, SCOPUS, Google Scholar and Oxford . Ethical Considerations: In this narrative study, we tried to follow the pri nciples of scientific writing, trusteeship and honesty in using resources.

Research literature in this field suggests three hypotheses triple processing models, system one and two of information processing, and intuitive - analytical thinking to e xplain medical errors and defects in clinical diagnoses, so that cognitive biases are considered one of the most basic origins of defects in the process of clinical reasoning. Accordingly, the findings are developed in three sections: C linical reasoning an d error in diagnosis, dual processing models and cognitive bias .

This narrative review revealed that it is necessary to address the cognitive aspects of clinical errors as long as the common and well - known causes of medical errors in health car e