Clinical Decision Making Processes - Essay Example

To discuss the clinical decision-making processes, I would like to present an analysis of the decision-making process of a case study in which the decision was made by my mentor and I witnessed it. There came a 55-year-old patient who appeared to be severely hypoglycemic apparently and unresponsive. The case went misdiagnosed as myalgia when the attending doctor realized the serum glucose level was normal. She did not pay enough attention to look at other more specific symptoms of hypoglycemia, simply noticing fatigue, malaise, and general weakness due to which the doctor dismissed the case as one of myalgia. Serum glucose level may be normal even when a patient presents with symptoms closely associated with hypoglycemia.

Later, the patient started feeling dizzy and was given a sandwich to eat upon which he regained vigor and the symptoms got relieved. This made sure that the patient was suffering from hypoglycemia and not myalgia. In this case, the doctor appeared to be using a schema-driven decision-making process. As schema-driven solutions are based on recognizing specific problems which may be very subtle sometimes, it helps in identifying the hidden difference between two similar situations. Adherence to a schema revolves around a deep perception of closely related situations similar in many ways and it is an effective decision-making process because it helps in differentiating diseases from one another which may appear to be similar.

As a recommendation, I would like to improve on decision-making in the same case in the future by less reliance on schema-driven solutions or by less adherence to a schema. I would, instead, like to rely on a pattern recognition-based decision-making process since it is a clinical approach most preferred by doctors, expert nurses,s and paramedic staff. This is because pattern recognition is based on assessing a patient’s situation and symptoms with a multidimensional approach so that no factors would go unnoticed. If the doctor in the case mentioned above had decided upon relying on pattern recognition-driven decision-making from the start, she would have thought from multiple perspectives.

She would have thought that a hypoglycemic patient may also have normal serum glucose levels and she would also have assessed other criteria needed to ensure a diagnosis of hypoglycemia. Then, the case of hypoglycemia would not have been mistaken for myalgia. Therefore, I would have relied on pattern recognition and thought from multiple perspectives before making a diagnosis. According to Elstein and Schwarz (2002), clinical decision-making is more a matter of pattern recognition and it should be used for solving easy cases. Read More