Cognitive Errors in Anesthesiology: Making Mistakes Even When We “Know” Better

Abstract

What does it feel like to be wrong? How can we know when we are making a mistake? We cannot, of course, because being wrong feels exactly like being right. We are oblivious to our errors at the time that we commit them. There is only the experience of realizing that we have been wrong. This idea of error blindness, put forth by Kathryn Schulz, may be summarized as: ‘‘We can be wrong, or we can know it, but we can’t do both at the same time’’ (Supplemental Digital Content 1, http://links.lww.com/ ASA/A200). The time lapse between thinking a wrong thought or making a wrong decision, and subsequently realizing it, may be very brief or very protracted. Indeed, there are likely many errors you have made of which you will never be aware. Despite error blindness, we must still endeavor to understand our thinking processes and aim to reduce errors and recover from them better and faster (Figure 1).