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Biomedical subjects

A S Elstein

Publications and source records attributed to A S Elstein.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Clinical ethical dilemmas: convergent and divergent views of two scholarly communities.

OBJECTIVE: To survey members of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH; n = 327) and of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM; n = 77) to elicit the similarities and differences in their reasoning about two clinical cases that involved ethical dilemmas. CASES: Case 1 was that of a patient refusing treatment that a surgeon thought would be beneficial. Case 2 dealt with end-of-life care. The argument was whether intensive treatment should be continued of an unconscious patient with multiorgan failure. METHOD: Four questions, with structured multiple alternatives, were asked about each case: identified core problems, needed additional information, appropriate next steps and who the decision maker should be. OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS: Substantial similarities were noticed between the two groups in identifying the core problems, the information needed and the appropriate next steps. SMDM members gave more weight to outcomes and trade-offs and ASBH members had patient autonomy trump other considerations more strongly. In case 1, more than 60% of ASBH respondents identified the patient alone as the decision maker, whereas members of SMDM were almost evenly divided between having the patient as the solo decision maker or preferring a group of some sort as the decision maker, a significant difference (p<0.02). In case 2, both groups agreed that the question of discontinuing treatment should be discussed with the family and that the family alone should not be the decision maker. CONCLUSION: Despite distinctively different methods of case analysis and little communication between the two professional communities, many similarities were observed in the actual decisions they reached on the two clinical dilemmas.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

On the origins and development of evidence-based medicine and medical decision making.

The aims of this paper are to identify the issues and forces that were the impetus for two recent developments in academic medicine, evidence-based medicine (EBM) and medical decision making (MDM); to make explicit their underlying similarities and differences; and to relate them to the fates of these innovations. Both developments respond to concerns about practice variation; the rapid growth of medical technology, leading to a proliferation of diagnostic and treatment options; the patient empowerment movement; and psychological research that raised questions about the quality of human judgment and decision making. Their commonalities include: use of Bayesian principles in diagnostic reasoning, and the common structure embedded in an answerable clinical question and a decision tree. Major differences include: emphasis on knowledge or judgment as the fundamental problem; the status of formal models and utility assessment; and the spirit and tone of the innovation. These differences have led to broader acceptance of EBM within academic medicine, while decision analysis, the fundamental tool of MDM, has been less welcomed in clinical circles and has found its place in guideline development, cost-effectiveness analysis, and health policy.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMed2001

Improving continuing medical education for surgical techniques: applying the lessons learned in the first decade of minimal access surgery.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the first decade of experience with minimal access surgery, with particular attention to issues of training surgeons already in practice, and to provide a set of recommendations to improve technical training for surgeons in practice. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: Concerns about the adequacy of training in new techniques for practicing surgeons began almost immediately after the introduction of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The concern was restated throughout the following decade with seemingly little progress in addressing it. METHODS: A preliminary search of the medical literature revealed no systematic review of continuing medical education for technical skills. The search was broadened to include educational, medical, and psychological databases in four general areas: surgical training curricula, continuing medical education, learning curve, and general motor skills theory. RESULTS: The introduction and the evolution of minimal access surgery have helped to focus attention on technical skills training. The experience in the first decade has provided evidence that surgical skills training shares many characteristics with general motor skills training, thus suggesting several ways of improving continuing medical education in technical skills. CONCLUSIONS: The educational effectiveness of the short-course type of continuing medical education currently offered for training in new surgical techniques should be established, or this type of training should be abandoned. At present, short courses offer a means of introducing technical innovation, and so recommendations for improving the educational effectiveness of the short-course format are offered. These recommendations are followed by suggestions for research.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed2000

Evidence-based morning report for inpatient pediatrics rotations.

The authors describe a patient-centered method for teaching evidence-based medicine that is part of the inpatient morning report for pediatrics residents at the University of Illinois at Chicago. With library support, residents search for evidence to answer their own questions about patients, and present it at morning report

Chicago↗
PubMed2000

Cost-effectiveness of universal compared with voluntary screening for human immunodeficiency virus among pregnant women in Chicago.

OBJECTIVES: To determine and compare the cost-effectiveness of implementing 3 screening strategies to detect human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection among pregnant women in Chicago, Illinois: no screening, voluntary screening, and universal screening. METHODS: A decision-analysis model was developed, using standard cost-effectiveness analysis from a societal perspective. Reference case estimates were derived from a surveillance project conducted by the Illinois Department of Public Health and studies were published in the medical literature. Costs included direct and indirect medical costs associated with identification of pregnant women infected with HIV and identification, prevention, and treatment of perinatally HIV-infected newborns. Specifically, for each screening option, the cost per pregnant woman screened, the resulting number of pediatric HIV infections, and the number of newborn life-years were calculated. All costs were adjusted to the 1997 dollar value and discounted at 3%. Sensitivity analyses were determined for all variables included in the decision model. RESULTS: The estimated prevalence of HIV infection among pregnant women in Chicago is .41%. For every 100,000 pregnant women, it is estimated that 104.6 children would be infected with HIV if no screening strategy were implemented and 44.8 children would be infected if voluntary HIV testing (assuming a 92.7% acceptance rate) were available. In comparison, if universal HIV testing was performed, the number of children infected with HIV would decrease to 40 cases. Sensitivity analysis across a maternal HIV prevalence rate of.01% to 2.2% found that universal screening would be cost-saving in communities where the seroprevalence is.21%. In Chicago, it would take an estimated 5. 2 months of screening pregnant women to avert 1 case of pediatric HIV. Taking into consideration the lifetime costs of treating a child with HIV infection, universal HIV testing of 100,000 pregnant women would result in a cost-savings of $3.69 million when compared with no screening, and $269,445 when compared with voluntary screening. We estimated that it would cost $11.1 million to screen 100,000 pregnant women in Chicago. The cost-savings produced with increased screening are the direct result of reduced cases of newborns infected with HIV. A 2-way sensitivity analysis was performed to examine how costs vary as a function of the voluntary rates for HIV-positive and HIV-negative women. When screening falls below 50% for HIV-positive mothers, universal screening becomes cheaper than voluntary screening even if no HIV-negative mothers were screened. CONCLUSION: Reference case analyses showed that universal HIV screening of pregnant women in Chicago would both decrease the number of HIV-infected newborns and save money in comparison to voluntary or no testing strategies. Sensitivity analysis was robust across all variables for the conclusion that universal screening was more effective than voluntary screening. For many communities that have HIV prevalence rates for mothers of >.21%, universal screening would also save money in comparison to voluntary screening. For communities with prevalence rates <.21%, the benefits of universal screening may outweigh the costs for screening as we found that desirable incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were found for prevalence rates as low as.0075%.

AIDS Serodiagnosis↗
PubMed1999

Enhancement of clinicians' diagnostic reasoning by computer-based consultation: a multisite study of 2 systems.

CONTEXT: Computer-based diagnostic decision support systems (DSSs) were developed to improve health care quality by providing accurate, useful, and timely diagnostic information to clinicians. However, most studies have emphasized the accuracy of the computer system alone, without placing clinicians in the role of direct users. OBJECTIVE: To explore the extent to which consultations with DSSs improve clinicians' diagnostic hypotheses in a set of diagnostically challenging cases. DESIGN: Partially randomized controlled trial conducted in a laboratory setting, using a prospective balanced experimental design in 1995-1998. SETTING: Three academic medical centers, none of which were involved in the development of the DSSs. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 216 physicians: 72 at each site, including 24 internal medicine faculty members, 24 senior residents, and 24 fourth-year medical students. One physician's data were lost to analysis. INTERVENTION: Two DSSs, ILIAD (version 4.2) and Quick Medical Reference (QMR; version 3.7.1), were used by participants for diagnostic evaluation of a total of 36 cases based on actual patients. After training, each subject evaluated 9 of the 36 cases, first without and then using a DSS, and suggested an ordered list of diagnostic hypotheses after each evaluation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Diagnostic accuracy, measured as the presence of the correct diagnosis on the hypothesis list and also using a derived diagnostic quality score, before and after consultation with the DSSs. RESULTS: Correct diagnoses appeared in subjects' hypothesis lists for 39.5% of cases prior to consultation and 45.4% of cases after consultation. Subjects' mean diagnostic quality scores increased from 5.7 (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.5-5.9) to 6.1 (95% CI, 5.9-6.3) (effect size: Cohen d = 0.32; 95% CI, 0.23-0.41; P<.001). Larger increases (P = .048) were observed for students than for residents and faculty. Effect size varied significantly (P<.02) by DSS (Cohen d = 0.20; 95% CI, 0.08-0.32 for ILIAD vs Cohen d = 0.45; 95% CI, 0.31-0.59 for QMR). CONCLUSIONS: Our study supports the idea that "hands-on" use of diagnostic DSSs can influence diagnostic reasoning of clinicians. The larger effect for students suggests a possible educational role for these systems.

Decision Support Techniques↗
PubMed1999

A multi-attribute model of prostate cancer patient's preferences for health states.

Multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) provides a way to model decisions involving trade-offs among different aspects or goals of a problem. We used MAUT to model prostate cancer patients' preferences for their own health state and we compared this model to patients' global judgments of health state utility. 57 patients with prostate cancer (mean age = 70) at two Chicago Veterans Administration health clinics were asked to evaluate health states described in terms of five health attributes affected by prostate cancer: pain, mood, sexual function, bladder and bowel function, and fatigue and energy. Each attribute had three levels that were used to form three clinically realistic health state descriptions (A = high, B = moderate, C = low). A fourth personalized health description (P) matched the patient's current health. We first measured patients' preferences using time trade-off (TTO) judgments for the three health states (A, B, and C) and for their own current health state (P). The TTO for the patient's own health state (P) was standardized by comparing it to TTO judgments for states A and C. We next constructed a multi-attribute model using the relative importance of the five attributes. The MAU scores were moderately correlated with the TTO preference judgments for the personalized state (Pearson r = 0.38, N = 57, p < 0.01). Thus, patients' preference judgments are moderately consistent and systematic. MAUT appears to be a potentially feasible method for evaluating preferences of prostate cancer patients and may prove helpful in assisting with patient decision making.

Aged↗
PubMed1999

Heuristics and biases: selected errors in clinical reasoning.

Many clinical decisions are made in uncertainty. When the diagnosis is uncertain, the goal is to establish a diagnosis or to treat even if the diagnosis remains unknown. If the diagnosis is known (e.g., breast cancer or prostate cancer) but the treatment is risky and its outcome uncertain, still a choice must be made. In researching the psychology of clinical judgment and decision making, the major strategy is to compare observed clinical judgments and decisions with the normative model established by statistical decision theory. In this framework, the process of diagnosing is conceptualized as using imperfect information to revise opinions; Bayes' theorem is the formal rule for updating a diagnosis as new data are available. Treatment decisions should be made so as to maximize expected value. This essay uses Bayes' theorem and concepts from decision theory to describe and explain some well-documented errors in clinical reasoning. Heuristics and biases are the cognitive factors that produce these errors.

Bayes Theorem↗
PubMed1999

Continuing medical education for life: eight principles.

Continuing medical education (CME) is being pressured to change in response to increasing and changing educational needs of practicing physicians, fostered by technical innovations, evolution of practice styles, and the reorganization of health care delivery. Leadership in the reform of CME falls primarily to the medical specialty societies in light of their traditional responsibilities for accrediting CME and maintaining professional standards. To address the need for reform, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1997 organized a conference to assemble CME program administrators from several medical specialties and academicians with expertise in postgraduate learning. At the conference, issues facing CME were examined. The authors, who were conference participants, state and explain eight principles that emerged from conference discussions. (For example: "Educational activities should be supportive of and coordinated with the transition to evidence-based medicine.") The principles reflect the interspecialty and interdisciplinary consensus achieved by the conference participants and can serve as useful guideposts for educators as they work to improve CME in their institutions. The authors conclude by noting the need for a more systematic and rigorously analytic approach, where CME content is determined according to assessed needs and CME is evaluated by measuring outcomes; for this to happen, CME educators and faculty must be brought up to date through training, including the use of problem-based learning. CME must also instill collegiality, interaction, and collaboration into the learning environment instead of being a solitary learning activity. Finally, CME must not only emphasize the acquisition of knowledge but also instruct physicians in the process of decision making to help them better use their knowledge as they make clinical judgments.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1999

Effects of prognosis, perceived benefit, and decision style on decision making and critical care on decision making in critical care.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effects of prognostic estimates, perceived benefit of treatment, and practice style on decision-making in critical care. DESIGN: Randomized assignment of subjects to either of two versions of a questionnaire designed to elicit treatment decisions for six intensive care unit cases based on actual patients. One version offered optimistic survival forecasts; the other, pessimistic forecasts. SUBJECTS: A random sample of 120 clinicians obtained from the Canadian Critical Care Society was contacted by mail. One version of the questionnaire was randomly assigned and mailed to each. Thirty-four replies, 17 for each version (response rate, 28%), were received and analyzed. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A list of treatment/management options was developed for each case, in three categories: recommended, questionable, and unacceptable. Subjects were also able to list new options that they would order that were not on the list. The dependent variables were the number of actions ordered in each category and the total for each case. Perceived benefit was measured by comparing subjective estimates of the probability of survival with the optimistic/pessimistic forecast given in the case. Practice style was assessed by correlating the total number of actions ordered across all possible pairs of cases. There were no significant differences between the two questionnaires on actions ordered either by category or by amount per category. Perceived benefit did not appear to be an important factor in decision-making. However, statistically significant correlations provide evidence for practice style in intensive care unit decision-making on an interventionist/noninterventionist dimension. CONCLUSIONS: There is no evidence that erroneous or biased prognostic estimates affect intensive care unit treatment choices. Neither the principle of maximizing expected utility nor the Rule of Rescue appear to affect these decisions systematically, but practice style does.

Canada↗
PubMed1999

QOL and outcomes research in prostate cancer patients with low socioeconomic status.

The VA Cancer of the Prostate Outcomes Study (VA CaPOS) is collecting quality-of-life (QOL) information from prostate cancer patients, spouses, and physicians at six VA medical centers. Currently, 601 men with prostate cancer are included in the study, most of whom are of low socioeconomic status and over half of whom are African-American. Quality-of-life responses were most favorable for newly diagnosed patients, intermediate for those with stable metastatic disease, and poorest for those with progressive metastatic disease. Patients could not provide reliable estimates of their own preferences for future QOL states but responded reliably to questions phrased as a comparison of the preferences of two hypothetical patients. High out-of-pocket costs for hormonal therapies, lack of health insurance, and a belief that the non-VA system offered poorer services were the most common reasons for patient transferral to the VA system. Satisfaction with medical care was generally high. While African-American patients were more likely to have advanced prostate cancer at diagnosis, after adjustment for differences in health literacy, race was no longer a significant predictor of advanced disease. The VA CaPOS provides useful information on health status and patient satisfaction of VA prostate cancer patients. Long-term evaluations are needed to detect clinically meaningful QOL information as the disease progresses.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

A comparison of perspectives on prostate cancer: analysis of utility assessments of patients and physicians.

BACKGROUND: Quality-of-life considerations are important in metastatic prostate cancer. In this study, we interviewed physicians and patients about their assessments and expectations on quality of life as metastatic prostate cancer progresses. METHODS: Physicians and patients made utility assessments of three hypothetical health states for metastatic disease using the time trade-off technique. Scores were bounded on a scale from 0.0 (death) to 1.0 (perfect health). RESULTS: Patients rated each of the health states as less desirable than the physicians. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians and patients differ in their perspectives on expected quality of life with metastatic prostate cancer. Our results emphasize the need to assess patients' utilities directly.

Decision Making↗
PubMed1997

Changes in diagnostic decision-making after a computerized decision support consultation based on perceptions of need and helpfulness: a preliminary report.

We examined the degree to which attending physicians, residents, and medical students' stated desire for a consultation on difficult-to-diagnose patient cases is related to changes in their diagnostic judgments after a computer consultation, and whether, in fact, their perceptions of the usefulness of these consultations are related to these changes. The decision support system (DSS) used in this study was ILIAD (v4.2). Preliminary findings based on 16 subjects' (6 general internists, 4 second-year residents in internal medicine, and 6 fourth-year medical students) workup of 136 patient cases indicated no significant main effects for 1) level of experience, 2) whether or not subjects indicated they would seek a diagnostic consultation before using the DSS, or 3) whether or not they found the DSS consultation in fact to be helpful in arriving at a diagnosis (p > .49 in all instances). Nor were there any significant interactions. Findings were similar using subjects or cases as the unit of analysis. It is possible that what may appear to be counter-intuitive, and perhaps irrational, may not necessarily be so. We are currently examining potential explanatory hypotheses in our ongoing current, larger study.

Attitude to Computers↗
PubMed1996

The influence of a decision support system on the differential diagnosis of medical practitioners at three levels of training.

As computer-based diagnostic consultation systems become, available, their influence and usefulness need to be evaluated. This report, based on partial data from a larger study, examines the influence of Iliad, a diagnostic consultation system, on the differential diagnosis of fourth year medical students, residents in medicine, and attendings in general internal medicine. Our results show that when faced with difficult diagnostic cases, medical students add significantly more diagnoses from Iliad's differential than do residents or attendings. However, the quality of Iliad's diagnostic advice in terms of the presence of the correct diagnosis, is no better for consultations done by students or residents compared to attendings.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1995

Clinical reasoning about new symptoms despite preexisting disease: sources of error and order effects.

BACKGROUND: Previous work that studied the evaluation of new, atypical symptoms in patients with preexisting diseases indicated that physicians largely ignored the past medical history and therefore erred in their diagnoses, when compared to a Bayesian analysis. Other studies have shown that the order in which information is presented to a decision maker can affect the inferences drawn, again contrary to a Bayesian standard. OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to investigate the source of disparity between clinical judgment and Bayesian analysis and to investigate the effect of alternative orders of presenting information on diagnostic conclusions. METHODS: Two groups of family physicians received a written clinical scenario. One group was given the past medical history before the history of present illness, the physical exam, and the laboratory data. The second group learned about the past medical history after all other clinical information had been presented. Judgments of test accuracy and probably diagnosis were collected at several points to identify the source of any diagnostic error. RESULTS: For both groups, the major source of error was in estimating the prior probability of disease, not in estimating the accuracy of a diagnostic test or updating opinions following receipt of test results. Although both groups of physicians received the same information, they came to markedly different conclusions about the most likely diagnosis. The group given the past medical history at the beginning of the scenario considered this information much less significant than did the group who received it at the end. CONCLUSIONS: Family physicians deviate from a Bayesian standard of reasoning by wrongly specifying prior probabilities and by being influenced by the order in which clinical information is presented.

Bayes Theorem↗
PubMed1993

Beyond multiple-choice questions and essays: the need for a new way to assess clinical competence.

This essay reviews the influence that research on psychological processes in clinical reasoning has had upon the characteristics and formats of licensing examinations such as the new United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and its predecessors, emphasizes the implications of such research for the assessment of clinical competence at all levels of medical education, and proposes a challenging new direction for educational research that could make clinical assessment more effective. Specifically, (1) factors are discussed that support the continued judicious use of multiple-choice questions (MCQs); and (2) emphasis is given to the need to assess the clinician's ability to analyze controversial clinical situations, where no single answer is agreed upon as "most nearly correct," for even though essay questions and oral examinations are better suited than MCQs to assess such questions, they have been replaced by MCQs largely because of problems of consistency in grading, breadth of domain sampling, and cost. Because of these limits on essays and oral examinations, a program of educational research is advocated to develop a test format that can effectively assess the clinician's abilities to deliberate among alternatives, to recognize the role of values and preferences in decisions, and to weigh risks and benefits. Just how much this new tool could be used for national certification and licensing examinations would have to be determined, but it is important that some component be included to signal to educators and new physicians that medical practice is, at least in part, concerned with matters for which final answers are not available.

Academic Medical Centers↗