Collaborative Diagnostic Conversations Between Clinicians, Patients, and Their Families: A Way to Avoid Diagnostic Errors

OBJECTIVE: To identify the components of the collaborative diagnostic conversations between clinicians, patients, and their families and how deficiencies in these conversations can lead to diagnostic errors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We purposively selected 60 video recordings of clinical encounters that included diagnosis conversations. These videos were obtained from the internal medicine, and family medicine services at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota. These clinical encounters were recorded between November 2017, and December 2021, during the conduct of studies aiming at developing or testing shared decision-making interventions. We followed a critically reflective approach model for data analysis. RESULTS: We identified 3 components of diagnostic conversations as follows: (1) recognizing diagnostic situations, (2) setting priorities, and (3) creating and reconciling a diagnostic plan. Deficiencies in diagnostic conversations could lead to framing issues in a way that sets diagnostic activities off in an incorrect or undesirable direction, incorrect prioritization of diagnostic concerns, and diagnostic plans of care that are not feasible, desirable, or productive. CONCLUSION: We identified 3 clinician-and-patient diagnostic conversation components and mapped them to potential diagnostic errors. This information may inform additional research to identify areas of intervention to decrease the frequency and harm associated with diagnostic errors in clinical practice.