Rudeness clouds judgement. And a little-known side effect is that a doctor who experiences it will therefore find it much harder to adapt their thinking. Whatever the first diagnosis is, Erez says, that’s what they’ll be more likely to stick with, even when strong new information enters the frame. It’s called a fixation error. ‘If you give doctors an initial diagnosis – even if it’s a diagnosis that comes from, say, the daughter of a patient, which is very unreliable – but then give them signs that actually point to a different problem, [you find that] people that experience rudeness don’t
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