Skip to content
BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter January 8, 2014

Diagnosis: A new era, a new journal

  • Mark L. Graber EMAIL logo and Mario Plebani
From the journal Diagnosis

Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.

   Martin H. Fischer

With the number of medical journals now numbering in the tens of thousands, why do we need one more? What’s so special about diagnosis? The question actually contains the answer: Diagnosis is special. Sherwin Nuland may have said it best: Diagnosis is ….“The most critical of a physician’s skills… It is every doctor’s measure of his abilities; it is the most important ingredient in his professional self image.” [1].

Besides being important to physicians, diagnosis is critically important to patients as well, and we will all be patients some day. We will want someone who excels at diagnosis who can tell us what’s wrong with us and what can be done to return us to health. It all starts with diagnosis.

A journal that focuses on diagnosis and how it can be improved will hopefully address many different goals. The needs are many; we need a journal that will focus on this topic because:

  1. there is a renaissance of interest in diagnosis. The past decade has seen an explosion of quality and safety measures, all focused on treatment. There are literally hundreds of such measures sponsored by the Leapfrog Group, the Joint Commission, the National Quality Forum, and many other groups, all devoted to medical treatment. The pendulum has swung too far, and needs to return to the diagnosis side of the equation. Interest in diagnosis is growing in many circles, sparked in part by Diagnostic Error in Medicine conference series, and the first Overdiagnosis Conference held just this year. Interest in the physical exam has being rekindled [2], accompanied by a parallel interest in clinical reasoning [3].

  2. the topic of diagnostic error is lost in the larger patient safety world. Google tells us there are at least 16 journals in the field of patient safety alone.1 But patient safety is a big world, and with the exception of the BMJ Quality and Safety, few of these journals have been a welcome home for authors publishing in the field of diagnostic error. The topic of diagnostic error has been neglected from the start of the patient safety movement [4]. Over a decade ago, the Institute of Medicine published the seminal report “To Err is Human” highlighting the frequency of deaths and injuries due to medical errors. In that report, the phrase medication error was used 70 times while diagnostic error occurs twice [5, 6]. No one wants to own the problem of diagnostic error; As we’ve said before: “In the quality and safety family diagnostic error is essentially an orphan” [7].

  3. there is a need to unite the various stakeholders and give them a common forum. Diagnosis is the starting point in every medical specialty, but just like responsibility, when it belongs to everyone it belongs to no one. The new journal will provide common ground for contributions in this field, and will hopefully spark more fruitful interactions amongst the many different parties that have an interest in medical diagnosis: Patients, clinicians, healthcare organizations, the laboratory medicine [8, 9] and medical imaging communities [10], insurers, payers, the medical diagnostics industry, the medical informatics industry, educators, researchers, and healthcare policy experts. We come from so many different perspectives, but we all share a common interest.

  4. it will help the field advance. The science of safety is immature, and the science of diagnostic safety is especially so. We are just beginning to understand the cognitive psychology that underlies clinical reasoning. The field of human factors is just starting to sink its teeth into the complex interactions between the cognitive aspects of diagnosis and the healthcare system [11]. Over-diagnosis, under-diagnosis, and misdiagnosis are each separate problems, but all worthy of attention and research. Besides the immense amount of work needed to understand the pathophysiology of diagnostic error, there is a commensurate need to start evaluating interventions aimed at reducing diagnostic errors [12–14]. There is work to be done on every front, and a journal dedicated to promoting such advances can only help in this effort.

  5. the problem of diagnostic error can no longer be ignored. Diagnosis is dedicated to all of the Rory Stauton’s and Aimee Copeland’s and John Riterr’s of the world, and the other hundreds of thousands of patients already harmed by diagnostic error, and the millions more who will be harmed in the future. We can do something about that.

Diagnostic error has been described as the “next frontier” in patient safety [15]. Our hope is that now, diagnostic error will no longer be an orphan and that the Journal will be the home and host to everyone who wants to see the quality and value of diagnosis improve, and the likelihood of harm from diagnostic error diminish.

We started off with the question of why a new journal focusing on diagnosis is needed. We hope we have answered the question convincingly. Because there is a need, a pressing need, and given the magnitude of the diagnostic error problem, one could argue that a journal on diagnosis is actually long overdue.

Mark L. Graber, MD, FACP and Mario Plebani, MD

Co-Editors in Chief, Diagnosis

  1. 1

    Current journals focusing on patient safety: Journal of Patient Safety; BMJ Quality and Safety: Journal of Drug, Healthcare, and Patient Safety; Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety; Patient Safety Monitor Journal; Journal of Patient Safety and Infection Control; Safety and Health Practitioner; Safety Science; Safety Science Monitor; The International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine; Citizens for Patient Safety – The Patient Medical Journal; Journal of Quality and Patient Safety.

References

1. Nuland S. How we die – reflections on life’s final chapter. New York: Knopf, 1994.Search in Google Scholar

2. Verghese A. In praise of the physical examination. Br Med J 2009;339:1385–7.10.1136/bmj.b5448Search in Google Scholar PubMed

3. Dhaliwal G. Developng teachers of clinical reasoning. Clinical Teacher 2013;10:313–7.10.1111/tct.12082Search in Google Scholar PubMed

4. Graber ML. Diagnostic error in medicine: a case of neglect. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf 2004;31:112–9.Search in Google Scholar

5. Institute of Medicine, editor. To err is human, building a safer health system. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999.Search in Google Scholar

6. Wachter R. Why diagnostic errors don′t get any respect – And what can be done about them. Health Affair 2010;29:1605–10.10.1377/hlthaff.2009.0513Search in Google Scholar PubMed

7. Graber M, Wachter R, Cassel C. Bringing diagnosis into the quality and safety equations. J Am Med Assoc 2012;308:1211–2.10.1001/2012.jama.11913Search in Google Scholar PubMed

8. Plebani M. Exploring the iceberg of errors in laboratory medicine. Clin Chim Acta 2009;404:16–23.10.1016/j.cca.2009.03.022Search in Google Scholar PubMed

9. Raab SS. Improving patient safety by examining pathology errors. Clin Lab Med 2004;24:863.10.1016/j.cll.2004.05.014Search in Google Scholar PubMed

10. Pinto A, Brunese L. Spectrum of diagnostic errors in radiology. World J Radiol 2010;28:377–83.10.4329/wjr.v2.i10.377Search in Google Scholar PubMed PubMed Central

11. Henriksen K, Brady J. The pursuit of better diagnostic performance: a human factors perspective. BMJ Quality and Safety 2013;22:ii1–5.10.1136/bmjqs-2013-001827Search in Google Scholar PubMed PubMed Central

12. McDonald K, Matesic B, Contopoulos-Iannidis D, Lonhart J, Schmidt E, Pineda N, et al. Patient safety strategies targeted at diagnostic errors – a systematic review. Ann Int Med 2013;158:381–9.10.7326/0003-4819-158-5-201303051-00004Search in Google Scholar PubMed

13. Singh H, Graber M, Kissam S, Sorensen A, Lenfestey NF, Tant E, et al. System-related interventions to reduce diagnostic errors: a narrative review. BMJ Quality and Safety 2012;21:160–70.10.1136/bmjqs-2011-000150Search in Google Scholar PubMed PubMed Central

14. Graber M, Kissam S, Payne V, Meyer A, Sorensen A, Lenfestey N, et al. Cognitive interventions to reduce diagnostic error: a narrative review. BMJ Quality and Safety 2012;21:535–57.10.1136/bmjqs-2011-000149Search in Google Scholar PubMed

15. Newman-Toker DE, Pronovost PJ. Diagnostic errors–the next frontier for patient safety. J Am Med Assoc 2009;301:1060–2.10.1001/jama.2009.249Search in Google Scholar PubMed

Published Online: 2014-01-08
Published in Print: 2014-01-01

©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Downloaded on 28.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/dx-2013-0036/html
Scroll to top button