Cognitive biases, environmental, patient and personal factors associated with critical care decision making: A scoping review

Abstract

Purpose: Cognitive biases and factors affecting decision making in critical care can potentially lead to life-threatening errors. We aimed to examine the existing evidence on the influence of cognitive biases and factors on decision making in critical care.

Materials and methods: We conducted a scoping review by searching MEDLINE for articles from 2004 to November 2020. We included studies conducted in physicians that described cognitive biases or factors associated with decision making. During the study process we decided on the method to summarize the evidence, and based on the obtained studies a descriptive summary of findings was the best fit.

Results: Thirty heterogenous studies were included. Four main biases or factors were observed, e.g. cognitive biases, personal factors, environmental factors, and patient factors. Six (20%) studies reported biases associated with decision making comprising omission-, status quo-, implicit-, explicit-, outcome-, and overconfidence bias. Nineteen (63%) studies described personal factors, twenty-two (73%) studies described environmental factors, and sixteen (53%) studies described patient factors.

Conclusions: The current evidence on cognitive biases and factors is heterogenous, but shows they influence clinical decision. Future studies should investigate the prevalence of cognitive biases and factors in clinical practice and their impact on clinical outcomes.

Keywords: Cognitive bias; Critical care; Decision making; Factors; Scoping review.