Age-related decline and diagnostic performance of more and less prevalent clinical cases

Christina St-Onge, Marjolaine Landry, Marianne Xhignesse, Gilles Voyer, Stéphanie Tremblay-Lavoie, Sílvia Mamede, Henk Schmidt, Remy Rikers

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Since cognitive abilities have been shown to decrease with age, it is expected that older physicians would not perform as well as their younger counterparts on clinical cases unless their expertise can counteract the cognitive effects of aging. However, studies on the topic have shown contradictory results. This study aimed to further investigate the effect of aging on physicians’ diagnostic accuracy when diagnosing prevalent and less prevalent cases based on clinical vignettes. A mixed design was used to assess the influence of case prevalence (high vs. low) as a within-subjects factor, and age group as a between subjects factor (50 years old; n = 19) on the diagnostic accuracy of 65 family physicians and 25 residents. Repeated Measure ANOVA revealed a significant effect of case prevalence (p 
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)561-570
Number of pages10
JournalAdvances in Health Sciences Education
Volume21
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2016

Keywords

  • Cognitive aging
  • Diagnostic performance
  • Family physicians
  • Pattern recognition
  • Prevalent and less prevalent cases
  • Working memory

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