Healthcare now
Case studies show how bias warps real clinical decisions.
This chapter sets the public story of the NHS, the anniversaries and the rhetoric, against falling performance, strikes and low morale. The authors admit their own early misconceptions, that treatments reliably worked and that problems had a single right answer. Six linked cases at a fictional hospital then dramatise bias in action. A fatal handover turns on anchoring and diagnostic momentum. An overloaded doctor slides into decision fatigue. A physiotherapist stays quiet for want of psychological safety while a collapsed lung is missed. A supervisor rewards confidence over accuracy. An emergency pair is undone by base rate neglect and search satisfaction. Managers are blamed through the fundamental attribution error.
Three takeaways
- Bias rarely acts alone, several can compound into irreversible harm
- Rewarding confidence and dismissing doubt is learned behaviour
- Plain-language boxes make the clinical scenarios readable for non-clinicians
Reflection
Questions for this chapter
Prompts to consider on your own, in a journal club or in a teaching session. All questions are optional, so you can read them without submitting anything. If you choose to submit answers, they are collected through Google Forms.