Cognitive Errors Associated With Medical Decision-Making: A Systematic Review

Decision-making in the medical profession is full of uncertainty. This review aimed to identify cognitive errors associated with physicians’ decisions.

PubMed and Medline databases were searched for English articles on cognitive biases published from 2000 to 2022. Among 235 found publications, 19 met the inclusion criteria.

Of the 19 analyzed studies, 40 cognitive errors were extracted, and 11 cognitive errors had maximum repetitions. These are availability, confirmation, overconfidence, anchoring, framing effect, omission, search satisficing, representativeness, premature closure, diagnosis momentum, and commission.

In medical students’ curricula, moral and clinical decision-making are marginalized by teaching professors. However, teaching humanities, psychology, and even literature are required, along with critical thinking and cognitive errors. Understanding cognitive errors are the first step towards training cognition strategies, which may improve patient safety. To reduce medical errors and their huge loss of life and money, the causes of medical errors must be known. Cognitive errors are among them, and by reducing cognitive errors, medical decision-making can be improved.