A Physician’s Typical Day

Take a look into a physician’s typical day.  With an average of 20 patients daily, physicians jump from patient to patient and diagnosis to diagnosis. One may come in with a rash; the next complains of heartburn; the next, chest pain; and so on. To fit 20 patients in a day, the little time doctors spend with each patient creates room for misdiagnosis.

Research has confirmed that cognitive mistakes by physicians are the predominant cause of this error.¹ Although most medical cases are ultimately correctly diagnosed and treated, errors leading to delay may result in poor quality of care, patient safety risks, increased costs, and, in some cases, malpractice litigation.^2,3

Download the infographic to take a closer look.

This physician diagnosed a patient with a tension headache. But he failed to ask for a detailed history and consider other diagnoses. If he had, he would have realized the patient is exposed to carbon monoxide at work and that is the root cause of his headache.

Later in the day, a patient complained of dizziness and diagnosed it as benign positional vertigo. He locked in on a diagnosis because of initial symptoms and failed to adjust. The patient actually had suffered a cerebellar stroke.

Asking for more information and documenting all symptoms can seem impossible with big time constraints but that is where VisualDx can help. The clinical diagnostic support system allows frontline health care professionals to enter specific data about the patient’s condition and quickly build a unique differential diagnosis for their patient.  VisualDx users can then work through the list of possible diagnoses to arrive at the best one, explain the process to the patient and decide on the right treatment moving forward.  

This technology puts fast and accurate diagnosis at your fingertips, lowering the risk of misdiagnosis, contributing to a high quality of care and keeping patient safety top of mind.

References:

1. Graber ML, Franklin N, Gordon R. Diagnostic error in internal medicine. Arch Intern Med. 2005;165(13):1493-1499. [PubMed].

2. Graber M. Diagnostic errors in medicine: a case of neglect. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2005;31(2):106-113. [PubMed].

3. Berner ES, Miller RA, Graber ML. Missed and delayed diagnoses in the ambulatory setting. Ann Intern Med. 2007;146(6):470; author reply 470-471. [PubMed].