Work Domain Analysis Applied to Medical Diagnosis

Abstract

Few studies have described the cognitive components that characterize the diagnostic process. This article illustrates the use of work domain analysis to create a functional depiction of diagnosis. The resulting abstraction-decomposition space clarifies the medical diagnostician’s work domain and provides a glimpse into the fundamental cognitive features of diagnosis. To facilitate comprehension of the abstraction-decomposition space’s portrayal of diagnosis, features of a generalized depiction of diagnosis and the abstraction-decomposition space were graphically coded to communicate areas of similarity. Limitations, suggestions for future work, and future applications of this work to reduce diagnostic error are provided.