Inattentional Blindness: Failure to Notice Something Unexpected in Plain Sight Among Surgical and Medical Trainees

Abstract

Inattentional Blindness (IB) is a cognitive phenomenon where individuals fail to notice both obvious and unexpected stimuli while focused on other tasks. It can have significant implications for performance, especially in healthcare. This study investigated the prevalence and nature of IB among surgical and internal medicine (IM) residents. Results indicated that IM residents more frequently identified a relevant stimulus, a lung nodule (81.3%) compared to surgical residents (57.1%), though the difference was not statistically significant. However, surgical residents more often noted an irrelevant stimulus, a gorilla, compared to IM residents (85.7% vs 50.0%, P < 0.02). The study documents the existence of IB among residents with differences in detection between specialties. The findings suggest the potential importance of teaching residents to recognize and address perceptual flaws in clinical work. Future research should explore strategies to mitigate IB, optimizing clinical performance and patient safety.