| Entry Date | Source | Link | Source Type | Domain | Subdomain1 | Subdomain2 | Key Points | Citns |
| 2023-07-09 | Sterman JD. All models are wrong: reflections on becoming a systems scientist. System Dynamics Review. 2002;18(4):501-531 | Link | Review /Overview | Systems | Systems dynamics | Complex adaptive systems | As diagnostic and therapeutic options continue to multiply, and health care services become more and more specialized, they begin to manifest the properties of complex adaptive systems including unforeseen interactions and emergent properties.The consequent risks are often not understood by clinicians and managers, and as this review of Sterman's contributions nicely illustrates, high intelligence and educational achievements are no guarantee of effective problem solving, especially in standard stock and flow problems of a type encountered in bed management on a regular basis in large acute hospitals. The need for specific education in this domain is very clear. | 1,477 |
| 2023-07-09 | Coory M, Scott I. Analysing low-risk patient populations allows better discrimination between high-performing and low-performing hospitals: a case study using inhospital mortality from acute myocardial infarction. Quality and Safety in Health Care. 2007;16(5):324 | Link | Empirical study | Groups | Patients | Statistical methods | For assessing clinical performance in hospital mortality from acute myocardial infarction, comparing low risk groups of patients provides better discrimination than those at higher risk. This seems worth exploring in hospital mortality of other causes, a possibility that thus far this does not seem to have attracted much attention | 8 |
| 2023-07-09 | Thor J, Lundberg J, Ask J, et al. Application of statistical process control in healthcare improvement: systematic review. Quality and Safety in Health Care. 2007;16(5):387 | Link | Review /Overview | Groups | Patients | Stat. process control | A review based on a meta-analysis of the use of statistical process control in healthcare - or perhaps more precisely of the under use of this valuable form of analysis, | 476 |
| 2023-07-09 | Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation Series | Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Accessed July 9 2023. | Link | Report /White paper | Groups | Organisations - hospitals | Variation | A gold mine of national information about the startlingly high levels of variation in various conditions and processes of care - with ranges from the highest to lowest of differing many fold indicating areas of both under use and overuse of care. In its published from it is given at state and SA3 statistical (regional) area but finer grain detail down to a hospital level is apparently available and that should the known and if necessary acted upon by senior clinicians and managers | |
| 2023-05-22 | Blastland M, Freeman ALJ, van der Linden S, Marteau TM, Spiegelhalter D. Five rules for evidence communication. Nature. 2020;587(7834):362-364. | Link | Review /Overview | Groups | Patients | Communication | A shorter and more concise version of the advice in van der Bles paper Link | 109 |
| 2023-05-21 | Dörner D. The Logic of Failure : Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations. Addison-Wesley Pub.; 1997 | Link | Book | Individuals | In general | Error | An exploration of how different people have different capacities for system thinking especially in stock and flow or other problems of complex origin. Relevant to hospital patient flow and bed management. As with other studies of system thinking abilities, high intelligence is no guarantee of success in solving these sorts of problems, nor is it related to any particular personalty type, | |
| 2021-02-03 | Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology 77, 1121 (1999). | Link | Empirical study | Individuals | In general | Behaviour - aberrant | People who are most ignorant about a topics are often the most confident of their knowledge - the "Dunning Kruger" effect | 6,575 |
| 2021-02-02 | van der Bles, A. M. et al. Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science. Royal Society Open Science 6, 181870 (2019). | Link | Review /Overview | Groups | Patients | Communication | An overview of the rationale of, and techniques for, communicating uncertainty about scientific findings and other important public issues | 81 |
| 2021-02-01 | Mercier, H. & Sperber, D. The enigma of reason: a new theory of human understanding. (2018) | Link | Theory /Hypothesis | Individuals | In general | Beliefs / attitudes | Convincingly argues that reasoning is used mainly to justify our internal pre-existing beliefs, and to persuade others to our adopt our beliefs, rather than to follow the pathways suggested by cool logic and empirically derived and demonstrably unequivocal facts. | 820 |
| 2021-01-27 | Berns, G. S. et al. Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation. Biol. Psychiatry 58, 245–253 (2005). | Link | Empirical study | Individuals | In general | Neuroscience | Study similar in design to that used by Solomon Asch to study social conformity but using functional MRI - showed that this may activate areas of the brain involved in perception rather than prefrontal 'judgement' areas. This would seem to suggest that in some folk, pressure of this sort changes what they actually see, not just how they think they should respond | 385 |
| 2021-01-27 | Asch, S. E. (1952). Group forces in the modification and distortion of judgments. In S. E. Asch, Social psychology (pp. 450–501). | Link | Empirical study | Individuals | In general | Behaviour - aberrant | The classic study of effects of group pressure in which subjects were shown lines of clearly different length. Some subjects in these groups however were required to give false answers that they were the same. About 30% of the test subjects (who were in ignorance of this collusion) followed group pressure and agreed with the false opinions of the majority.Although Asch's original study population were male USA college students, and from an era of very different socio-poltical conditions,similar results have been found in different countries, and cultures. | 2,726 |
| 2021-01-27 | Granovetter, M. Threshold models of collective behavior. The American Journal of Sociology 83, 1420–1443 (1978). | Link | Theory /Hypothesis | Groups | In general | Behaviour | An interesting conceptual model suggesting that collective actions such as rioting may spread in a group based on chance interactions between individuals with different thresholds for this type of behaviour. Rioting starts when these connections occur in combinations favourable for the development of a cascade. It seems plausible that this may also occur in less dramatic forms of contagious human behaviour such as stock market ans social media frenzies and other 'madness of crowds' Author references Solomon Asch's famous studies of group pressure to generate social conformity even in the face of clear objective evidence to the contrary | 6,402 |