Centola, Damon;
Becker, Joshua;
Zhang, Jingwen;
Aysola, Jaya;
Guilbeault, Douglas;
Khoong, Elaine;
(2023)
Experimental evidence for structured information-sharing networks reducing medical errors.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)
, 120
(31)
, Article e2108290120. 10.1073/pnas.2108290120.
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Abstract
Errors in clinical decision-making are disturbingly common. Recent studies have found that 10 to 15% of all clinical decisions regarding diagnoses and treatment are inaccurate. Here, we experimentally study the ability of structured information-sharing networks among clinicians to improve clinicians' diagnostic accuracy and treatment decisions. We use a pool of 2,941 practicing clinicians recruited from around the United States to conduct 84 independent group-level trials, ranging across seven different clinical vignettes for topics known to exhibit high rates of diagnostic or treatment error (e.g., acute cardiac events, geriatric care, low back pain, and diabetes-related cardiovascular illness prevention). We compare collective performance in structured information-sharing networks to collective performance in independent control groups, and find that networks significantly reduce clinical errors, and improve treatment recommendations, as compared to control groups of independent clinicians engaged in isolated reflection. Our results show that these improvements are not a result of simple regression to the group mean. Instead, we find that within structured information-sharing networks, the worst clinicians improved significantly while the best clinicians did not decrease in quality. These findings offer implications for the use of social network technologies to reduce errors among clinicians.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Experimental evidence for structured information-sharing networks reducing medical errors |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2108290120 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108290120 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Collective intelligence, decision-making, medical errors, networks |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > UCL School of Management |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10174435 |
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