Two Tales of Cognitive Diagnostic Error

Health care is busy! We have patients on patients on patients. They come one right after the other, and we have little time between to catch up on documentation. As a matter of fact, most clinics/companies prefer you document while you’re with the patient. All of this leaves little time to reflect on your decision-making with each patient, and this might be a bigger problem than you realize.

Here are two case reports that illustrate examples of cognitive diagnostic error perfectly, both experienced just last week* by yours truly. One, I caught and helped; the other…

This is the person you are trying to help

In walks your 2pm evaluation. Well, not really…they scoot in backwards, sitting on their four-wheeled walker complaining about how long the medical history form is and “why do you need to know all that stuff?” A long past medical history is fine, you can handle that, you can synthesize how 10 years of uncontrolled diabetes mixes with COPD, a back problem they’ve had “since they were 19” and the multiple progressive knee scopes and procedures they’ve had.

During the interaction, however, the person is “off.” They don’t interact with the ease and simplicity that you do with your staff, your friends or the prior patient. You can’t quite describe it well.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Ah yes, a classic riddle indeed and one I will answer. No. It does not make a sound. Let’s explore this, and how it relates to understanding pain and sensation.

First we will define a sound. The English Oxford dictionary defines it as “Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear.”  You need both waves and an ear to complete the “hear.” So in our above riddle, there is no hear of the sound due to there being no person’s ear in the riddle, as it is in the definition.