Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2019 Nov;59(10):1863-1870.
doi: 10.1111/head.13686. Epub 2019 Nov 4.

Cognitive Biases & Errors in Headache Medicine

Affiliations
Review

Cognitive Biases & Errors in Headache Medicine

Christopher H Gottschalk. Headache. 2019 Nov.

Abstract

Premise: In recent years, the importance and prevalence of cognitive biases has gained scholarly attention in medicine as well as management science regarding a wide range of human activities.

Problem: The purpose of this review is to illustrate some of the many areas of Headache Medicine that exemplify some of these areas and to highlight the fact that our discipline is, in some cases, apparently more prone to some of these biases than other areas of clinical medicine.

Potential solution: The lack of prospective studies to identify and address unconscious cognitive processes that skew the process of clinical headache management indicates that this is a field of investigation that is ripe for attention.

Keywords: cognitive biases; cognitive errors; heuristics.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Graber ML, Franklin N, Gordon R. Diagnostic error in internal medicine. Arch Intern Med. 2005;165:1493-1499.
    1. Redelmeier DA, Shafir E, Aujla PS. The beguiling pursuit of more information. Med Decis Making. 2001;21:376-381.
    1. Croskerry P. From mindless to mindful practice - Cognitive bias and clinical decision making. N Engl J Med. 2013;368:2445-2448.
    1. Sahi SK, Arora AP, Dhameja N. An exploratory inquiry into the psychological biases in financial investment behavior. J Behav Finance. 2013;14:94-103.
    1. Phillips-Wren G, Jefferson T, McKniff S. Cognitive bias and decision aid use under stressful conditions. J Decis Syst. 2019;28:162-184.

LinkOut - more resources