Professional Judgment

Recent debate in both Europe and North America has focussed on how clinicians make judgments and decisions, how these may be evaluated and how they could be improved. This volume provides students, teachers and practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to the main descriptive and prescriptive approaches to judgment and decision making in clinical medicine. The contributors, who include psychologists, economists, decision theorists, statisticians, lawyers and sociologists, as well as medical specialists, provide examples of recent empirical research and its applications, as well as outlining the relevant concepts and theories. Policy-capturing models, data-based aids, expert ('knowledg-based') systems and decision analysis are the main techniques introduced, with attention to both their methodological bases and practical evaluation. Also included in the collection are a series of papers which consider the economic, ethical and legal contexts of clinical activity and the education and wider socialization of clinicians. Issues surrounding the 'cost-effective' use of resources, the obtaining of 'informed consent' from patients and ethical behaviour under uncertainty are highlighted.