AHRQ brief examines how ED nurses contribute to diagnostic safety

Safety is enhanced when diagnosis is viewed as the product of distributed cognition, according to an issue brief released this month by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Diagnosing patients in the emergency department (ED) setting occurs in a time- and information-constrained environment, creating high-risk for diagnostic errors, the brief states. Viewing diagnosis as a distributed, team effort, with information exchanged among parties with different knowledge, can help reduce the estimated 7 million diagnostic errors made in EDs each year. “Nurses’ input can be critical because nursing knowledge complements yet is different from medical knowledge and is based not only on principles of science but also on holism and intuition,” the brief argues.