Practicing Medicine with Colleagues: Pitfalls from Social Psychology Science

Abstract

This perspective reviews three pitfalls from psychology science that can distort clinical assessments and contribute to interpersonal conflicts. One pitfall is the illusion that one's own subjective perceptions or judgments are objective observations or interpretations that reasonable colleagues would share. A second pitfall involves selfserving situational attributions rather than disposition attributions for explaining missteps after things go wrong. A third pitfall is confirmation bias that leads to a perseverance of erroneous beliefs, a tendency to mostly seek supportive colleagues, and a failure to check for dissenting viewpoints. An awareness of these three pitfalls may help clinicians improve patient care when practicing with colleagues.KEY WORDS: medical error; fallible reasoning; judgment and decisions; illusion of objectivity; situational factors; confirmation bias.

Principles and Practice of Gossiping About Colleagues in Medicine

“…5 Social psychology science provides some insights on fundamental principles of gossip that may be relevant to clinicians in medicine. 6 In this article, we review three important findings from social psychology science relevant to team cooperation, the specific transmitter, and the individual receiv-er (Table 1). Clinicians working in groups may benefit from recognizing the prosocial function of healthy gossip and avoiding the antisocial adverse effects of harmful gossip.…”

“…Social psychology science provides some insights on fundamental principles of gossip that may be relevant to clinicians in medicine 6 . In this article, we review three important findings from social psychology science relevant to team cooperation, the specific transmitter, and the individual receiver (Table 1).…”

Pitfalls from Psychology Science that Worsen with Practice

“…Similarly, clinicians may dismiss constructive criticism from those who lack a likeability halo solely because they offer a contrary view. 28 As in personal life, clinicians should value professional friends who are willing to offer candid feedback.…”

Understanding Patient Personality in Medical Care: Five-Factor Model

“…The scattered comments about personality that sometime appear in medical records and are potentially available for text mining, furthermore, often say more about the author than the subject. 6 , 7 As a consequence, patient self-report questionnaires and observational surveys tend to provide the most common evidence on personality in health care (Table 1 ).…”