Clinician Conceptualization of the Benefits of Treatments for Individual Patients.

Importance: Knowing the expected effect of treatment on an individual patient is essential for patient care.

Objective: To explore clinicians' conceptualizations of the chance that treatments will decrease the risk of disease outcomes.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This survey study of attending and resident physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants was conducted in outpatient clinical settings in 8 US states from June 2018 to November 2019.

Accuracy of Practitioner Estimates of Probability of Diagnosis Before and After Testing.

Importance: Accurate diagnosis is essential to proper patient care.

Objective: To explore practitioner understanding of diagnostic reasoning.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this survey study, 723 practitioners at outpatient clinics in 8 US states were asked to estimate the probability of disease for 4 scenarios common in primary care (pneumonia, cardiac ischemia, breast cancer screening, and urinary tract infection) and the association of positive and negative test results with disease probability from June 1, 2018, to November 26, 2019.