Page 152 - Hospital Authority Convention 2017

Symposiums
HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2017

S8.1 Decision Making 09:00 Theatre 1

To Do or Not To Do: Determining Effectiveness and Appropriateness of Surgery
Harris I
Orthopaedics Department, University of New South Wales, Australia
Different methods for evaluating surgical effectiveness will be discussed, along with their relative likelihood of overestimating
benefits and underestimating harms. It will be shown that the estimate of effectiveness changes according to the method of
evaluation and that less biased methods are needed to improve the accuracy of surgery.

Ethical obstacles to determining exist whereby ethical approval is not required to introduce new surgical techniques yet there
are considerable ethical obstacles to the evaluation of those new techniques.
Measurements of appropriateness of surgical treatments are required once effectiveness has been established, as significant
practice variation exists for effective treatments, providing evidence for under- and over-treatment
New ways of evaluating the effectiveness and appropriateness of established and new surgical procedures will be discussed,
including traditional randomised trials and registries, modern methods that incorporate routine practice and methods of
funding will also be discussed.

S8.2 Decision Making 09:00 Theatre 1

Cognitive Biases in Clinical Decision Making
Klein J
Department of Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Australia

Clinicians, like all humans, call fall prey to cognitive biases. These biases can have an impact on diagnostic and treatment
Wednesday, 17 May
decisions. Two key biases that can affect clinical decision making will be discussed: the over-confidence bias and the
confirmatory bias. For each bias how it can operate in clinical settings and remedies for avoiding the bias will also be
discussed.

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