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Supplemental Appendix. Case Examples of the 3 Decision Process Types
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The Article in Brief
Clinical Intuition in Family Medicine: More Than First Impressions
Amanda Woolley and Olga Kostopoulou
Background Clinical intuition is sometimes viewed as the mark of an expert and other times as mere guesswork. This study examines intuition as experienced by physicians and identifies the cognitive processes active in medical decision making.
What This Study Found Although the medical literature discusses clinical intuition as first impressions or the first thing that comes to a physician's mind, this is only a part of what most family physicians understand by the term "intuition." Based on in-depth interviews with 18 family physicians analyzing 24 different patient cases in which the physicians believed they experienced an intuition, 3 types of decision processes emerged: gut feelings, recognitions, and insights. In all cases examined, participants experienced conflict between their intuition and a decision they perceived to be more rational or between their intuition and their expectations about what other physicians would do.
Implications
- The outcomes of clinical intuition can be negative or positive.
- The authors suggest that, until we know more about the circumstances under which intuitive processes produce accurate judgments, physicians should not be directed to avoid intuition.