 The Role of Clinical “Experience†in Diagnostic PerformanceAngelo Fasoli, Silvia Lucchelli and Renato Fasoli Medical Decision Making, 1998, vol. 18, issue 2, 163-167 Abstract: Twenty-one physicians examined records of 43 patients who had attended the hospital because of chest pain. Of these patients, 20 had had coronary heart disease (CHD), 15 had had nonspecific pain, and eight had had pulmonary embolism. The physicians indicated the probability of CHD in each case on the basis of 18 clinical findings, not including ECG, x-ray, or biochemical studies. The trial was repeated five years later, using the same records, by 16 of the same physicians. Diagnostic accuracy was evaluated by ROC curves, and the weight ascribed to each cue was inferred by multiple regression with estimated probability of CHD as the dependent variable. No significant change of areas under the ROC curves with increasing length of clinical experience was observed. Multiple regression was significant in 30 of 37 analyses. The distributions of most physicians' estimates of probabilities had similar shapes five years apart. It is concluded that “experience†does not have a clear role in diagnostic performance based on recorded data and that personal calibration and preferences in estimating probabilities often persist for years. Keywords: clinical experience; diagnosis; diagnostic performance; probability estimates (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:18:y:1998:i:2:p:163-167 DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9801800205 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Medical Decision Making |
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