Paramedic Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad Washington, District of Columbia
Description: The most challenging parts of EMS aren’t the tough intubations or the difficult rescues—it’s making the right clinical decision despite all the ways your brain is trying to lead you astray. Cognitive biases happen when we make subconscious shortcuts like relying too heavily on one piece of information or only focusing on findings that confirm an initial assumption. And they happen more often to people who are sleep deprived, over-worked and taking in multiple pieces of information at the same time—sound familiar? In this session, we’ll talk about the causes of cognitive bias, how to recognize them, and what steps we can take as clinicians to avoid making errors that could harm our patients.
Learning Objectives:
Define cognitive bias and list several examples
List the factors that make clinicians more susceptible to cognitive bias
Describe several ways EMS clinicians can prevent cognitive bias from causing them to make clinical errors
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