Many experts in the field of medicine have considered misdiagnosis the next big area for study. This is due to the high level of danger that misdiagnosis can cause. Obviously, a misdiagnosis can lead to serious injury or even possibly death depending on the circumstances. According to the National Institute of Health, the three main kinds of misdiagnosis are no-fault, system-based errors, and human-cognitive errors.
No-fault errors are comparatively self-explanatory: these occur when a misdiagnosis happens through no fault of a doctor, medical professional, or medical system. No-fault errors may occur due to patients giving confusing explanations of symptoms or when the disease came on with very few symptoms to begin with.
A system error misdiagnosis is when there was a malfunction in either a technical or an organizational system. System errors may be due to certain pieces of technology either failing or giving incorrect data. They may also be a result of information being processed incorrectly by human agents.
Human-cognitive errors are the ones that most often make it to court (though sometimes you can find system error misdiagnoses in the courtroom as well), as these are the misdiagnoses that result through the fault of medical personnel. human-cognitive failures may involve poor verification of symptoms or potentially poor reasoning on the part of doctors or other medical professionals.
Of the three types of misdiagnosis, by far the most common is human-cognitive. For example, in one study conducted in the Netherlands, 96% of all misdiagnoses that ended poorly were the result of human-cognitive errors. For this reason, if you or someone you love has undergone a misdiagnosis, it is highly likely that a human-cognitive error is at fault.