The influence of cognitive Bias on decision-making in healthcare sectors

  • Unique Paper ID: 193585
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 10
  • PageNo: 7085-7094
  • Abstract:
  • Cognitive biases systematically impair clinical decision-making and contribute to diagnostic errors, inappropriate treatments, and health disparities. Despite extensive training, physicians remain susceptible to anchoring, confirmation bias, availability heuristic, overconfidence, framing effects, and premature closure. Research indicates that cognitive factors underlie approximately 75% of diagnostic errors, which occur in 10–15% of cases across medical specialities (Graber et al., 2012; Croskerry, 2013). This review examines how these biases operate in high-pressure settings such as emergency medicine, oncology, and primary care, and how they disproportionately harm marginalised patients. Time constraints, emotional influence, and information overload consistently amplify bias effects. Effective mitigation combines individual strategies (such as metacognition, cognitive forcing, and checklists) with system-level interventions (including clinical decision support systems, structured reporting, and mandatory bias-awareness training). Incorporating cognitive bias education into medical curricula and continuing professional development offers a feasible, high-impact approach to improving diagnostic accuracy, patient safety, and equity in healthcare delivery.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{193585,
        author = {Carolyne Sisley Vogae},
        title = {The influence of cognitive Bias on decision-making in healthcare sectors},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {10},
        pages = {7085-7094},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=193585},
        abstract = {Cognitive biases systematically impair clinical decision-making and contribute to diagnostic errors,  inappropriate treatments, and health disparities. Despite extensive training, physicians remain  susceptible to anchoring, confirmation bias, availability heuristic, overconfidence, framing effects,  and premature closure. Research indicates that cognitive factors underlie approximately 75% of  diagnostic errors, which occur in 10–15% of cases across medical specialities (Graber et al., 2012;  Croskerry, 2013). 
This review examines how these biases operate in high-pressure settings such as emergency  medicine, oncology, and primary care, and how they disproportionately harm marginalised patients.  Time constraints, emotional influence, and information overload consistently amplify bias effects. 
Effective mitigation combines individual strategies (such as metacognition, cognitive forcing, and  checklists) with system-level interventions (including clinical decision support systems, structured  reporting, and mandatory bias-awareness training). Incorporating cognitive bias education into  medical curricula and continuing professional development offers a feasible, high-impact approach  to improving diagnostic accuracy, patient safety, and equity in healthcare delivery.},
        keywords = {},
        month = {March},
        }

Cite This Article

Vogae, C. S. (2026). The influence of cognitive Bias on decision-making in healthcare sectors. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(10), 7085–7094.

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