Since it is impossible in a family medicine setting to define signs and symptoms that prove the presence of myocardial problems, gut feelings may contribute to the family physician’s medical decision-making. Chest pain, for instance, may indicate cardiac diseases, gastro-esophageal or pulmonary disorders, but can also be a sign of musculoskeletal or mental illnesses. all a family physician knows about a patient apart from the signs and symptoms, are not discussed in traditional textbooks on medical decision-making, but often used by family physicians to support their diagnostic reasoning. Gut feelings and some important aspects of context knowledge, i.e. Uncertainty about diagnosing is a typical characteristic of general practice. It enables quantitative research into the role of gut feelings and their diagnostic value in family physicians’ diagnostic reasoning. We provided a linguistic validated English-language text of the questionnaire. The questionnaire’s internal consistency was high (0.91). Factor analysis showed one factor with opposites for sense of reassurance and sense of alarm items. The agreement between the classification in clear sense of reassurance, clear sense of alarm and ambiguous case vignettes as derived from the initial study and the study population’s judgments was substantial (Kappa = 0.62). ResultsĪs hypothesized we found that the correlations between the reference labels and corresponding items were high for the clear-case vignettes (0.59 – 0.72) and low for the ambiguous-case vignettes (0.08 – 0.23). Construct validity was assessed by testing hypotheses and an internal consistency procedure was performed. 49 experienced family physicians evaluated each 10 vignettes using the questionnaire. Based on the results of an initial study (26 family physicians), we divided the case vignettes into a group involving a clear role for the sense of reassurance or the sense of alarm and a group involving an ambiguous role. We constructed 16 case vignettes from real practice situations and used the accompanying ‘sense of reassurance’ or the ‘sense of alarm’ as reference labels. Our objective is to validate a questionnaire measuring the presence of gut feelings in diagnostic reasoning. A measuring instrument is desirable for further research. a ‘sense of reassurance’ or a ‘sense of alarm’, play a substantial role in diagnostic reasoning. Family physicians perceive that gut feelings, i.e.
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