Download or read book The Cognitive Autopsy written by Pat Croskerry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind heart disease and cancer, medical error is now listed as one of the leading causes of death. Of the many medical errors that may lead to injury and death, diagnostic failure is regarded as the most significant. Generally, the majority of diagnostic failures are attributed to the clinicians directly involved with the patient, and to a lesser extent, the system in which they work. In turn, the majority of errors made by clinicians are due to decision making failures manifested by various departures from rationality. Of all the medical environments in which patients are seen and diagnosed, the emergency department is the most challenging. It has been described as a "wicked" environment where illness and disease may range from minor ailments and complaints to severe, life-threatening disorders. The Cognitive Autopsy is a novel strategy towards understanding medical error and diagnostic failure in 42 clinical cases with which the author was directly involved or became aware of at the time. Essentially, it describes a cognitive approach towards root cause analysis of medical adverse events or near misses. Whereas root cause analysis typically focuses on the observable and measurable aspects of adverse events, the cognitive autopsy attempts to identify covert cognitive processes that may have contributed to outcomes. In this clinical setting, no cognitive process is directly observable but must be inferred from the behavior of the individual clinician. The book illustrates unequivocally that chief among these cognitive processes are cognitive biases and other flaws in decision making, rather than knowledge deficits.

Download or read book Autopsy of a Crime Lab written by Brandon L. Garrett and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book exposes the dangerously imperfect forensic evidence that we rely on for criminal convictions. "That's not my fingerprint, your honor," said the defendant, after FBI experts reported a "100-percent identification." The FBI was wrong. It is shocking how often they are. Autopsy of a Crime Lab is the first book to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. In this devastating forensic takedown, noted legal expert Brandon L. Garrett poses the questions that should be asked in courtrooms every day: Where are the studies that validate the basic premises of widely accepted techniques such as fingerprinting? How can experts testify with 100-percent certainty about a fingerprint, when there is no such thing as a 100 percent match? Where is the quality control at the crime scenes and in the laboratories? Should we so readily adopt powerful new technologies like facial recognition software and rapid DNA machines? And why have judges been so reluctant to consider the weaknesses of so many long-accepted methods? Taking us into the lives of the wrongfully convicted or nearly convicted, into crime labs rocked by scandal, and onto the front lines of promising reform efforts driven by professionals and researchers alike, Autopsy of a Crime Lab illustrates the persistence and perniciousness of shaky science and its well-meaning practitioners.

Download or read book Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes written by Jonathan Howard and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-28 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This case-based book illustrates and explores common cognitive biases and their consequences in the practice of medicine. The book begins with an introduction that explains the concept of cognitive errors and their importance in clinical medicine and current controversies within healthcare. The core of the book features chapters dedicated to particular cognitive biases; cases are presented and followed by a discussion of the clinician's rationale and an overview of the particular cognitive bias. Engaging and easy to read, this text provides strategies on minimizing cognitive errors in various medical and professional settings.

Download or read book The Cognitive Autopsy written by Pat Croskerry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind heart disease and cancer, medical error is now listed as one of the leading causes of death. Of the many medical errors that may lead to injury and death, diagnostic failure is regarded as the most significant. Generally, the majority of diagnostic failures are attributed to the clinicians directly involved with the patient, and to a lesser extent, the system in which they work. In turn, the majority of errors made by clinicians are due to decision making failures manifested by various departures from rationality. Of all the medical environments in which patients are seen and diagnosed, the emergency department is the most challenging. It has been described as a "wicked" environment where illness and disease may range from minor ailments and complaints to severe, life-threatening disorders. The Cognitive Autopsy is a novel strategy towards understanding medical error and diagnostic failure in 42 clinical cases with which the author was directly involved or became aware of at the time. Essentially, it describes a cognitive approach towards root cause analysis of medical adverse events or near misses. Whereas root cause analysis typically focuses on the observable and measurable aspects of adverse events, the cognitive autopsy attempts to identify covert cognitive processes that may have contributed to outcomes. In this clinical setting, no cognitive process is directly observable but must be inferred from the behavior of the individual clinician. The book illustrates unequivocally that chief among these cognitive processes are cognitive biases and other flaws in decision making, rather than knowledge deficits.

Download or read book Improving Diagnosis in Health Care written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-12-29 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.

Download or read book The Psychology of Death Investigations written by Katherine Ramsland and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Psychology of Death Investigations outlines definitively how behavioral evidence can often provide the necessary components and "missing pieces" to complement physical evidence as an essential tool for incident reconstruction. In order to determine the direction of an investigation and to prioritize leads, if necessary, death investigators must establish the manner of a death: natural, accident, homicide or suicide. The most overlooked aspect of death investigation is the psychological dimension, which can provide unique leads, correct false assumptions, enhance investigative awareness, and solve cases in surprising ways. In an estimated 10–20% of cases, the manner of death cannot be determined, or worse, has been erroneously categorized. Since many jurisdictions can’t afford behavioral consultants, this book has been written to provide practical information for a basic psychological analysis. If the circumstances surrounding a death are equivocal, psychological consultants can compile information retrospectively about a deceased person’s mental state and possible motive to assist with unravelling ambiguity about the manner of death. This is the primary function of a psychological autopsy, and, as such, this is the first book of its kind dedicated solely to the topic. In the event that the manner of death is determined to be a homicide, behavioral profiling can help to focus the potential pool of suspects. Professionals and students alike will benefit from the exercise of cognitive awareness and the application of psychological logic presented. Psychologists, medical examiners, coroners, attorneys, fraud examiners, law enforcement personnel, death and homicide investigators, and students enrolled in criminal profiling, forensic psychology, and criminal justice programs will find this text to be a compelling and insightful reference to add to their professional toolkit.

Download or read book Advances in Patient Safety written by Kerm Henriksen and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.

Download or read book Keep Sharp written by Sanjay Gupta and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keep your brain young, healthy, and sharp with this science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline by neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Throughout our life, we look for ways to keep our minds sharp and effortlessly productive. Now, globetrotting neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers “the book all of us need, young and old” (Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker) with insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age. Keep Sharp debunks common myths about aging and mental decline, explores whether there’s a “best” diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it’s healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from “super-brained” people who are in their eighties and nineties with no signs of slowing down—and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer’s, answers all your questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline. He likewise provides you with a personalized twelve-week program featuring practical strategies to strengthen your brain every day. Keep Sharp is the “must-read owner’s manual” (Arianna Huffington) you’ll need to keep your brain young and healthy regardless of your age!

Download or read book The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide written by Yogesh Dwivedi and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With recent studies using genetic, epigenetic, and other molecular and neurochemical approaches, a new era has begun in understanding pathophysiology of suicide. Emerging evidence suggests that neurobiological factors are not only critical in providing potential risk factors but also provide a promising approach to develop more effective treatment and prevention strategies. The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide discusses the most recent findings in suicide neurobiology. Psychological, psychosocial, and cultural factors are important in determining the risk factors for suicide; however, they offer weak prediction and can be of little clinical use. Interestingly, cognitive characteristics are different among depressed suicidal and depressed nonsuicidal subjects, and could be involved in the development of suicidal behavior. The characterization of the neurobiological basis of suicide is in delineating the risk factors associated with suicide. The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide focuses on how and why these neurobiological factors are crucial in the pathogenic mechanisms of suicidal behavior and how these findings can be transformed into potential therapeutic applications.

Download or read book Autopsy of a Boring Wife written by Marie-Renée Lavoie and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like a Québécois Bridget Jones’s Diary, Autopsy of a Boring Wife tells the hysterically funny and ultimately touching tale of forty-eight-year-old Diane, a woman whose husband is having an affair because, he says, she bores him. Diane takes the change to heart and undertakes an often ribald, highly entertaining journey to restore trust in herself--and others--that offers an astute commentary on women and girls, gender differences, and the curious institution of twenty-first century marriage. All the details are up for scrutiny in this brisk, yet tender story of a path to recovery. Autopsy of a Boring Wife is a wonderfully fresh novel of the pitfalls of an apparently “boring” life that could be any of ours.

Download or read book Diagnosis written by Pat Croskerry and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite diagnosis being the key feature of a physician's clinical performance, this is the first book that deals specifically with the topic. In recent years, however, considerable interest has been shown in this area and significant developments have occurred in two main areas: a) an awareness and increasing understanding of the critical role of clinical decision making in the process of diagnosis, and of the multiple factors that impact it, and b) a similar appreciation of the role of the healthcare system in supporting clinicians in their efforts to make accurate diagnoses. Although medicine has seen major gains in knowledge and technology over the last few decades, there is a consensus that the diagnostic failure rate remains in the order of 10-15%. This book provides an overview of the major issues in this area, in particular focusing on where the diagnostic process fails, and where improvements might be made.

Download or read book The Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology of Stroke written by Olivier Godefroy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-18 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The care of stroke patients has changed dramatically. As well as improvements in the emergency care of the condition, there have been marked advances in our understanding, management and rehabilitation of residual deficits. This book is about the care of stroke patients, focusing on behavioural and cognitive problems. It provides a comprehensive review of the field covering the diagnostic value of these conditions, in the acute and later phases, their requirements in terms of treatment and management and the likelihood and significance of long-term disability. This book will appeal to all clinicians involved in the care of stroke patients, as well as to neuropsychologists, other rehabilitation therapists and research scientists investigating the underlying neuroscience.

Download or read book Autopsy of War written by John A. Parrish, M.D. and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the outside, John Parrish is a highly successful doctor, having risen to the top of his field as department head at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Inside, however, he was so tortured by the memories of his tour of duty as a marine battlefield doctor in Vietnam that he was unable to live a normal life. In Autopsy of War, the author delivers an unflinching narrative chronicling his four-decade battle with the unseen enemy in his own mind as he struggled with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Parrish examines his Southern Baptist childhood and the profound influence of his father, a fire and brimstone preacher turned Navy chaplain, while offering a candid assessment of the "God and Country" ethos that leads young men to rush wide-eyed into war. He describes the unimaginable carnage and acts of cruelty he witnessed in Vietnam, experiences that shattered his world view leaving him to retreat from his family upon his return stateside. Living virtually homeless at times, he visited veteran shelters and relived the horrors of war in a series of harrowing flashbacks as he dealt with suicidal thoughts. The author writes honestly and probingly of his episodes of infidelity and battles with sex addiction. Readers follow his steady journey toward recovery and his professional contributions in the field of medicine and technology, as well as a joint program with the Boston Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital to aid returning veterans. Perhaps most poignantly, Parrish speaks of his quest to discover the identity of one particular solider in Vietnam he could not save—and whose memory has haunted him ever since. Autopsy of War is a soul searching memoir that is both an intensely personal narrative and a universally relevant trip through the world of war and recovery.

Download or read book Das Gehirn meines Vaters written by Jonathan Franzen and published by PONS. This book was released on 2009 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2-sprachiger Lektüreband mit einer Erzählung von Jonathan Frantzen und einer Audio-CD mit dem englischen Text; für Lernende mit guten Vorkenntnissen.

Download or read book Black Box Thinking written by Matthew Syed and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobody wants to fail. But in highly complex organizations, success can happen only when we confront our mistakes, learn from our own version of a black box, and create a climate where it’s safe to fail. We all have to endure failure from time to time, whether it’s underperforming at a job interview, flunking an exam, or losing a pickup basketball game. But for people working in safety-critical industries, getting it wrong can have deadly consequences. Consider the shocking fact that preventable medical error is the third-biggest killer in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths every year. More people die from mistakes made by doctors and hospitals than from traffic accidents. And most of those mistakes are never made public, because of malpractice settlements with nondisclosure clauses. For a dramatically different approach to failure, look at aviation. Every passenger aircraft in the world is equipped with an almost indestructible black box. Whenever there’s any sort of mishap, major or minor, the box is opened, the data is analyzed, and experts figure out exactly what went wrong. Then the facts are published and procedures are changed, so that the same mistakes won’t happen again. By applying this method in recent decades, the industry has created an astonishingly good safety record. Few of us put lives at risk in our daily work as surgeons and pilots do, but we all have a strong interest in avoiding predictable and preventable errors. So why don’t we all embrace the aviation approach to failure rather than the health-care approach? As Matthew Syed shows in this eye-opening book, the answer is rooted in human psychology and organizational culture. Syed argues that the most important determinant of success in any field is an acknowledgment of failure and a willingness to engage with it. Yet most of us are stuck in a relationship with failure that impedes progress, halts innovation, and damages our careers and personal lives. We rarely acknowledge or learn from failure—even though we often claim the opposite. We think we have 20/20 hindsight, but our vision is usually fuzzy. Syed draws on a wide range of sources—from anthropology and psychology to history and complexity theory—to explore the subtle but predictable patterns of human error and our defensive responses to error. He also shares fascinating stories of individuals and organizations that have successfully embraced a black box approach to improvement, such as David Beckham, the Mercedes F1 team, and Dropbox.

Download or read book The Death of Expertise written by Tom Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.

Download or read book Why People Die by Suicide written by Thomas Joiner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on extensive clinical and epidemiological evidence, as well as personal experience, Thomas Joiner provides the most coherent and persuasive explanation ever given of why and how people overcome life's strongest instinct, self-preservation. He tests his theory against diverse facts about suicide rates among men and women; white and African-American men; anorexics, athletes, prostitutes, and physicians; members of cults, sports fans, and citizens of nations in crisis.