Rod,
Could you let me know where the article to which you refer came from?
I've ofetn thought an intesting example of "intuition" / "gut feeling" /
whatever - would be to to feed some A+E medics the kind of statements that
we get when the "alert phone" rings, and see what their IMMEDIATE guesses
are as to what the diagnosis is.
As soon as the VERY FIRST phrase is uttered (e.g. "56 year old ...", "24
year old ... ", "Elderly ...") describing whats coming, we start generating
diagnostic hypotheses (?MI ?Trauma ?CVA) wihtout having to think about it.
These hypotheses are revised / added to as soon as further information is
given (e.g. " ... male ...", "... female ...", " ... student ..." , " ... 2
weeks post op ...", " ... found on floor ..." "... GCS 6 ...", "... CPR in
progress ..." etc.
This is a kind of reflexive, intuition process, as opposed the higher level,
rational, reasoned approach which we subsequently use to generate plans of
pragmatic treatment and investigations etc. I would guess that these two
types of reasoning have a very different neurological basis, with
statistical pattern recogntion methods like neural networks being
appropriate for modelling the former, and something very different needed to
model the latter.
Or maybe I just need to get back to shop floor ...
Jon Bury
>From: Roderick Mackenzie <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: D-dimers and decisions
>Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 11:07:31 +0100 (BST)
>
>
>Thought for the day
>
>Intuition = immediate mental apprehension without reasoning.
>
>Just read an interesting (non-medical) piece on how expereinced operators
>make decisions. I think this is the sort of thing we mean when we talk
>about clinical acumen.
>
>Just a thought.
>
>Rod.
>
>
>____________________________________________________________________________
>
>Roderick Mackenzie
>e-mail [log in to unmask]
>
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