pat croskerry,
an author with whom you should get familiar, describes critical thinking in medicine as an iterative process consisting of two systems. System one is quick, easy and often wrong. System one is Lucy assuming that the rustling is a tiger. It’s also when you look at a patient who is in his sixties, has a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket and is “tripodding” and “pursed-lip breathing” in the emergency department and you immediately know he has an exacerbation of COPD. So what’s the problem? It turns out that System One thinking is often subject to COGNITIVE BIAS