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Decision Fatigue

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Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes

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Abstract

Ellen was a 45-year-old woman with a history of migraines who presented with “trouble getting out the right words.” On exam, she had trouble naming certain objects and saying complicated sentences. She had some mild weakness of her right hand. She was rushed for a CT to rule-out intracranial pathology. The CT was read as normal, and she was diagnosed with a migraine headache. When a new team of clinicians took over her care after a change of shift, they noticed that the CT had been misread and that there was a clot in her left middle cerebral artery, demonstrating a stroke as the cause of her symptoms. By the time this finding was noticed, too much time had elapsed to give her thrombolytic medications (Fig. 1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neurology and Psychiatry, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    Jonathan Howard MD

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Howard, J. (2019). Decision Fatigue. In: Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93224-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93224-8_6

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