Choice Architecture: Nudging Clinicians Toward Better Diagnostic Testing

 

Clinicians make thousands of decisions every day. Deciding how to use and interpret diagnostic tests is just one small part of those myriad decisions. Come learn how to influence those decisions through thoughtful design and understanding of the common biases that influence human choice.

Originally published on July 7, 2022

Lecture Presenter

Valerie Vaughn, MD, MSc

Valerie Vaughn, MD, MSc

Assistant Professor, Director of Hospital Medicine Research
Department of Internal Medicine, University of Utah

Dr. Valerie Vaughn is an assistant professor and director of Hospital Medicine Research at the University of Utah. She comes via the University of Michigan where she completed Internal Medicine residency, chief residency, and a hospital medicine research fellowship. Her research focuses on improving the safety of hospitalized patients by improving diagnosis and reducing inappropriate antibiotic use through antibiotic and diagnostic stewardship. As a practicing hospitalist, she works to understand the role hospitalists play in inappropriate antibiotic use related to common infections such as pneumonia and urinary tract infection. Currently, she is the hospitalist lead for an initiative to improve antibiotic use across 60 hospitals in Michigan, the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety Consortium, and has two diagnostic error measures under consideration for adoption by the National Quality Forum.

Objectives

After this presentation, participants will be able to:

  • Understand the science of decision-making
  • Recognize how understanding decision-making can enable us to purposefully influence medical decision-making, including diagnostic testing

Sponsored by:

University of Utah School of Medicine, Department of Pathology, and ARUP Laboratories