Physicians' diagnostic overconfidence may be harming patients

Institutions that notice diagnostic errors need to have a better way to notify physicians when their diagnoses are incorrect, researchers say, because internists’ overconfidence in their decisions may be hurting patient care. Even though they were right only 6% of the time and should have had doubts, internists asked to diagnose tough patient cases express nearly the same strong confidence in their diagnoses as they express for much easier cases, when their accuracy rates were much better, at 55%.

In addition, researchers found, when dealing with these tougher problem cases, physicians were not more likely to seek opinions from their peers, ask for second opinions, or recommend referrals, although they did request more reference materials to help them determine their patient’s illness.

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