The use of deliberate reflection to reduce confirmation bias among orthopedic surgery residents

Abstract

Introduction: cognitive biases might affect decision-making processes such as clinical reasoning and confirmation bias is among the most important ones. The use of strategies that stimulate deliberate reflection during the diagnostic process seems to reduce availability bias, but its effect in reducing confirmation bias needs to be evaluated. Aims: to examine whether deliberate reflection reduces confirmation bias and increases the diagnostic accuracy of orthopedic residents solving written clinical cases. Methods: experimental study comparing the diagnostic accuracy of orthopedic residents in the resolution of eight written clinical cases containing a referral diagnosis. Half of the written cases had a wrong referral diagnosis. One group of residents used deliberate reflection (RG), which stimulates comparison and contrast of clinical hypotheses in a systematic manner, and a control group (CG), was asked to provide differential diagnoses with no further instruction. The study included 55 third-year orthopedic residents, 27 allocated to the RG and 28 to the CG. Results: residents on the RG had higher diagnostic scores than the CG for clinical cases with a correct referral diagnosis (62.0±20.1 vs. 49.1±21.0 respectively; p = 0.021). For clinical cases with incorrect referral diagnosis, diagnostic accuracy was similar between residents on the RG and those on the CG (39.8±24.3 vs. 44.6±26.7 respectively; p = 0.662). We observed an overall confirmation bias in 26.3% of initial diagnoses (non-analytic phase) and 19.5% of final diagnoses (analytic phase) when solving clinical cases with incorrect referral diagnosis. Residents from RG showed a reduction in confirmation of incorrect referral diagnosis when comparing the initial diagnosis given in the non-analytic phase with the one provided as the final diagnosis (25.9±17.7 vs. 17.6±18.1, respectively; Cohen d: 0.46; p = 0.003). In the CG, the reduction in the confirmation of incorrect diagnosis was not statistically significant. Conclusions: confirmation bias was present when residents solved written clinical cases with incorrect referral diagnoses, and deliberate reflection reduced such bias. Despite the reduction in confirmation bias, diagnostic accuracy of residents from the RG was similar to those from the CG when solving the set of clinical cases with a wrong referral diagnosis.