Health psychology/Cognitive biases · Clinical reasoning

Premature closure

What it means

Accepting a diagnosis before it has been fully verified, stopping the diagnostic process too soon.

Worked example

Labelling breathlessness as "anxiety" and discharging, before excluding PE.

In the exam

A young woman with pleuritic chest pain is labelled as having anxiety and sent home before a PE is considered or excluded.

What settles it

Premature closure ends the search early ("the diagnosis is made, stop thinking"). Anchoring specifically means not updating the FIRST hypothesis as data accrue.

Classically confused with

Anchoring

Source: Croskerry; AAFP 2011