Diagnosis plays a central role in medicine, and getting it right is pivotal in helping the patient to get the appropriate care. Making a diagnosis is a complex exercise, because patients don't come with labels saying I suffer from this condition or that one. There is probably no task more challenging for a doctor than making the correct diagnosis. The doctor needs to be a detective in order to figure out what's wrong, and it's because there is so much that we still have to learn about the human body, that diagnosis is still a very uncertain art.
It takes considerable clinical acumen to make the right diagnosis, which is why one in every ten diagnoses is wrong. Diagnostic error is the leading cause of medical malpractice claims in the US, and is estimated to cause 40,000-80,000 deaths annually. It's because misdiagnosis can do so much harm, that we need to ensure that the diagnostic…
