Abstract
Discussing or describing the decision-making process requires a defined, accurate vocabulary. We must differentiate between the decision-making process and the clinical outcome. Physicians usually focus on the clinical outcome and ignore the process used to obtain the outcome. The decision-making process and the outcome therefore need to be evaluated independently. The two are not necessarily congruent—a valid, well-thought-out decision is not guaranteed to produce the desired clinical outcome, and a good clinical outcome is not necessarily the result of a sound decision. This chapter discusses the fundamental terms and concepts used to describe or evaluate the process used to arrive at a given decision.
You cannot enter any world to which you don’t have the language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Words, words, words.
—Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Act II, Scene II, line 194
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Vordermark II, J.S. (2019). Ways of Thinking. In: An Introduction to Medical Decision-Making. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23147-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23147-7_2
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