Evaluation of a Metacognitive Mnemonic to mitigate cognitive errors

Defined as one’s deviations from rationality, cognitive errors are the main source of diagnostic errors. One example is premature closure, i.e., the tendency to conclude the diagnostic process before the evidence could be verified. Although a doctor may have the intention to mitigate them, a gap in its actual implementation in a busy clinical setting exists as these errors can be very nuanced. This project explored the use of a mnemonic checklist to mitigate diagnostic errors in “diagnosis generation” stage and “diagnosis evaluation stage” in classroom, as well as its usefulness and possible ways of implementation in real clinical setting.