Aggravation and deliberation over lung herniation.

A Caucasian woman aged 58 years with history of asthma and surgically repaired congenital diaphragmatic hernia presented to the emergency department (ED) with persistent cough, pleuritic chest pain, shortness of breath, in spite of recent treatment for influenza A virus. On physical examination, a large bulge was protruding from her left posterior thorax. She was found to have a large abnormal radiographic lucency on lateral chest X-ray posterior to the thoracic cavity, confirmed with chest CT to represent a large lung herniation in between the left seventh and eighth ribs.

A mixed-methods exploration of cognitive dispositions to respond and clinical reasoning errors with multiple choice questions.

Background: Cognitive dispositions to respond (i.e., cognitive biases and heuristics) are well-established clinical reasoning phenomena.

Exploring examinee behaviours as validity evidence for multiple-choice question examinations.

Context: Clinical-vignette multiple choice question (MCQ) examinations are used widely in medical education. Standardised MCQ examinations are used by licensure and certification bodies to award credentials that are meant to assure stakeholders as to the quality of physicians. Such uses are based on the interpretation of MCQ examination performance as giving meaningful information about the quality of clinical reasoning.