Speaking of Guidelines in Medicine “Among doctors, the level of noise is far higher than we might have suspected. In diagnosing cancer and heart disease—even in reading X-rays—specialists sometimes disagree. That means that the treatment a patient gets might be a product of a lottery.” “Doctors like to think that they make the same decision whether it’s Monday or Friday or early in the morning or late in the afternoon. But it turns out that what doctors say and do might well depend on how tired they are.” “Medical guidelines can make doctors less likely to blunder at a patient’s expense. Such
...more
