Role of clinical context in residents’ physical examination diagnostic accuracy

CONTEXT: Clinical context may act as both an aid to decision making and a source of bias contributing to medical error. The effect of clinical history, a form of clinical context, on the diagnostic accuracy of the physical examination is unknown. METHODS: We randomised internal medicine residents to receive either no history or a short stem suggestive of one of six cardiac valvular diagnoses prior to a 10-minute objective structured clinical …