Referral Decision Making of General Practitioners: A Signal Detection Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Signal detection theory (SDT) describes how respondents categorize ambiguous stimuli over repeated trials. It measures separately "discrimination" (ability to recognize a signal amid noise) and "criterion" (inclination to respond "signal" v. "noise"). This is important because respondents may produce the same accuracy rate for different reasons. We employed SDT to measure the referral decision making of general practitioners (GPs) in cases of possible lung cancer.

Methods

We constructed 44 vignettes of patients for whom lung cancer could be considered and estimated their 1-year risk. Under UK risk-based guidelines, half of the vignettes required urgent referral. We recruited 216 GPs from practices across England. Practices differed in the positive predictive value

SUBMITTER: Kostopoulou O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6311616 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature