Abstract Manager

Facilitated and Dedicated Poster

P7 - 01

Accept

I declare I have no actual or potential conflict of interest in relation to this program.

'Trust me I'm an expert' remains a very valuable therapeutic tool yet how do you use it effectively when the foundation of that expertise has been shaken to its core by the Covid-19 pandemic?

no

General Call (Workshop, Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation)

Oral

Education Innovation

Other

Professor of Medical Education

yes

Rethinking Certainty - how to teach 'evidence based' patient care when there is no evidence?

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally upended our reliance on Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) based on Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT's) leaving clinicians to adjust to practicing medicine when there is no evidence. Also, the necessary switch to creating evidence through 'fast-tracking' research into therapeutic improvisation based on anecdotes is profoundly upsetting to practitioners who have been able to rely on EBM as the foundation of clinical decision making. This issue has been described as a 'Bayesian fatigue' (Rosenquist ( 2020); 'a stress-induced dysphoria experienced' caused when 'knowledge acquired over decades…becomes less important than information being gathered from disparate sources in real-time'. Yet whilst 'Trust me I'm an expert' is a valuable therapeutic tool how do clinicians use it effectively when the foundation of that expertise has been shaken to its core? This presentation will explore how we can enable our students to develop the skills to cope with this 'Bayesian dysphoria' when practicing in a more complicated clinical environment than we could ever have imagined

The established way to review cases is in Clinical Case conferences. To address Bayesian fatigue students must be able to review clinical cases using critical reflection and analysis based on expressing the 'hunches' and 'best guesses' that are part of clinical decision making. Teaching these critical reflection skills is now a key part of the Masters in Medical Education at Dundee so our student educators can embed this into all clinical teaching

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that reliance on EBM is a false premise and as educators we must enable students to critically reflect and express the underlying reasons for their 'best guess' clinical decisions

Uncertainty

clinical decision making

critical reflection

General

Teaching and learning

Physician & Medical Student Health and Well-being

Professionalism

Patient Safety

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes