Complementarity of Clinician Judgment and Evidence Based Models in Medical Decision Making: Antecedents, Prospects, and Challenges

Abstract

Early accounts of the development of modern medicine suggest that the clinical skills, scientific competence, and doctors’ judgment were the main impetus for treatment decision, diagnosis, prognosis, therapy assessment, and medical progress. Yet, clinician judgment has its own critics and is sometimes harshly described as notoriously fallacious and an irrational and unfathomable black box with little transparency. With the rise of contemporary medical research, the reputation of clinician judgment has undergone significant reformation in the last century as its fallacious aspects are increasingly emphasized relative to the evidence based options. Within the last decade, however, medical forecasting literature has seen tremendous change and new understanding is emerging on best ways of sharing medical information to complement the evidence based medicine practices. This review revisits and highlights the core debate on clinical judgments and its interrelations with evidence based medicine. It outlines the key empirical results of clinician judgments relative to evidence based models and identifies its key strengths and prospects, the key limitations and conditions for the effective use of clinician judgment, and the extent to which it can be optimized and professionalized for medical use.