Good clinical judgement has always been prized, but practical tips for improving judgement can be difficult to find. Clinicians must rely on scientific theory, personal experience, patient perspectives and other insights when making judgements, and they must often contend with missing data, conflicting information, limited time and long-term trade-offs.

The hardest problems to solve in medicine are the ones where no one recognizes that anything is wrong. A group headed by Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research, Sunnybrook & Women's College Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ont., has developed a series of articles that draw on research in cognitive psychology to help clinicians anticipate and possibly avoid pitfalls in clinical judgement.

1. Eliciting an insightful history of present illness
2. Obtaining a reliable past medical history
3. Thinking clearly in an emergency
4. Surviving in the report card era