Bridging the feedback gap: a sociotechnical approach to informing clinicians of patients’ subsequent clinical course and outcomes

To improve their diagnosis and management skills, clinicians need consistent, timely and accurate feedback. Feedback helps clinicians become better calibrated, leading to more appropriate clinical decisions. Miscalibration—when clinicians’ confidence in the accuracy of their decisions does not align with their actual accuracy—may lead to overconfidence and diagnostic error.1 Consistent structured feedback leads to improved outcomes such as accurate diagnosis of acute chest pain,2 improved prehospital emergency care3 and lower costs of hospitalisation.4 Despite its benefits, significant gaps exist in delivering feedback to clinicians. In particular, clinicians do not consistently receive patient outcome feedback, that is, information on the subsequent clinical course and outcomes of patients that they have diagnosed and treated.