Observational studyAnnals of emergency medicine2021
The Influence of the Availability Heuristic on Physicians in the Emergency Department.
Observational study in Annals of emergency medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- How prior spectacle prescriptions shape diagnostic behavior: evidence from a randomized field experiment on vision care in Western China.BMC health services research · 2025Trial
- Beyond the algorithm: reframing biomarker-guided antibiotic stewardship with behavioural insights.The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy · 2026Article
- Lumbar puncture use and antibiotic treatment in newly admitted febrile children following index cases of invasive infections.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Heuristics, biases, and cognitive pitfalls of emergency teledermatology: Navigating the fine line between making and avoiding diagnostic errors.Journal der Deutschen Dermatologischen Gesellschaft = Journal of the German Society of Dermatology : JDDG · 2026Article
- Factors influencing emergency department utilisation using Andersen's behavioural model: a cross-sectional study in a public hospital in Malaysia.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- How Clinicians Decide? Exploring Complexity of Antibiotic Prescribing in Emergency Departments Using Video-Reflexive Ethnography.Qualitative health research · 2023Article
- Changes in Cancer Screening Rates Following a New Cancer Diagnosis in a Primary Care Patient Panel.JAMA network open · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
STUDY
objectiveHeuristics, or rules of thumb, are hypothesized to influence the care physicians deliver. One such heuristic is the availability heuristic, under which assessments of an event's likelihood are affected by how easily the event comes to mind. We examined whether the availability heuristic influences physician testing in a common, high-risk clinical scenario: assessing patients with shortness of breath for the risk of pulmonary embolism.
methodsWe performed an event study from 2011 to 2018 of emergency physicians caring for patients presenting with shortness of breath to 104 Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. Our measures were physician rates of pulmonary embolism testing (D-dimer and/or computed tomography scan) for subsequent patients after having a patient visit with a pulmonary embolism discharge diagnosis, hypothesizing that physician rates of pulmonary embolism testing would increase after having a recent patient visit with a pulmonary embolism diagnosis due to the availability heuristic.
resultsThe sample included 7,370 emergency physicians who had 416,720 patient visits for shortness of breath. The mean rate of pulmonary embolism testing was 9.0%. For physicians who had a recent patient visit with a pulmonary embolism diagnosis, their rate of pulmonary embolism testing for subsequent patients increased by 1.4 percentage points (95% confidence interval 0.42 to 2.34) in the 10 days after, which is approximately 15% relative to the mean rate of pulmonary embolism testing. We failed to find statistically significant changes in rates of pulmonary embolism testing in the subsequent 50 days following these first 10 days.
conclusionAfter having a recent patient visit with a pulmonary embolism diagnosis, physicians increase their rates of pulmonary embolism testing for subsequent patients, but this increase does not persist. These results provide large-scale evidence that the availability heuristic may play a role in complex testing decisions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.