About The Course
Explore how clinical decision making is shaped by human fallibility, limited cognitive capacity and the pressures of high-stakes practice. Led by Professor Jill Klein, this on-demand course examines cognitive bias in healthcare, cognitive dissonance, diagnostic error, growth mindset and the conditions that support psychological safety. It offers clinicians practical ways to question assumptions, respond constructively to mistakes, and strengthen judgement, communication and learning across clinical practice and multidisciplinary healthcare teams.
Who Is This Course For?
This course is suitable for:
- Psychiatrists
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Mental Health Nurse Practitioners (MHNPs)
- Psychologists
- Mental health professionals
- Clinicians working in or expanding into psychiatry and mental health care
Accreditation Information:
- Psychiatry Accreditation: This course is available for self-accreditation with the RANZCP and other relevant psychiatric and mental health organisations.
- GP Accreditation: This course is available for self-accreditation with RACGP for general practitioners.
- On completion of this course, participants will receive a course completion certificate and 1.5 CPD hours (EA).
What You'll Learn
In this on-demand course, Professor Klein will cover:
- Key sources of human fallibility and their influence on clinical judgement.
- Cognitive dissonance and responses to error or conflicting information.
- How a growth mindset can support reflection, feedback and development.
- Psychological safety and its role in candid discussion, team learning and patient safety.
Course Programme
4 Modules | Evidence-Informed Clinical Update | 1.5 hours total length
- Clinical decision-making under uncertainty, time pressure and incomplete information
- Confirmation bias and its influence on diagnosis and treatment decisions
- Limited working memory, cognitive load, fatigue and distraction
- Recognising information that does not fit an initial clinical impression
- Practical prompts for considering alternative explanations
- Why recognising error can threaten professional identity
- Cognitive dissonance and the discomfort of being wrong
- Self-justification, confirmation bias and self-serving bias
- Rejecting contradictory information and persisting with suboptimal decisions
- Perfectionism, responsibility and responding constructively to mistakes
- Fixed and growth mindsets in relation to intelligence, ability and performance
- How mindset influences responses to challenge, error and negative feedback
- Reframing mistakes as part of professional learning and development
- Moving from judging ability to identifying a process for improvement
- Supporting trainees through specific, development-focused feedback
- What psychological safety means within healthcare teams
- Creating conditions for candid clinical conversations
- Questioning assumptions, raising uncertainty and respectfully challenging decisions
- Discussing mistakes across professional hierarchy and seniority
- The role of leaders in shaping learning-focused team cultures
- Ethical judgement, reflective review and moving beyond blame
Course Description
Human Decision Making: From Fallibility to Psychological Safety
Led by Professor Jill Klein, this on-demand course examines how clinical decision making is shaped by uncertainty, limited cognitive capacity and the pressures of high-stakes practice. It explores key sources of human fallibility and how cognitive bias in healthcare can influence diagnostic reasoning, treatment choices and responses to new information.
Human Fallibility and Clinical Judgement
Professor Klein examines confirmation bias, limited working memory, fatigue and distraction as sources of fallibility. Participants consider why sound reasoning may not produce a favourable outcome, and why a good outcome does not necessarily confirm that the process was sound. Practical prompts, including asking what does not fit and what else could explain a presentation, offer a framework for strengthening clinical decision making without suggesting that error can be eliminated.
Cognitive Dissonance, Growth Mindset and Professional Identity
The course then explores why recognising error can threaten professional identity and generate cognitive dissonance. Self-justification, perfectionism and resistance to contradictory information may hinder reflection and correction, illustrating how cognitive bias in healthcare can extend beyond the initial decision. Professor Klein considers how a growth mindset can help clinicians retain accountability while viewing feedback, challenge and mistakes as part of professional development. This supports more reflective clinical decision making.
Psychological Safety and Safer Clinical Teams
Psychological safety in healthcare is distinguished from comfort or freedom from difficult feedback. Instead, it describes conditions in which clinicians can raise uncertainty, question assumptions, respectfully challenge decisions and discuss mistakes across hierarchy. The course considers how leadership, candid discussion and diverse perspectives can support learning and safer clinical decision making, and why psychological safety in healthcare is relevant to patient care and professional development.
Learning Outcomes
In this presentation, Professor Klein will cover:
- Key sources of human fallibility and their influence on clinical judgement.
- Cognitive dissonance and responses to error or conflicting information.
- How a growth mindset can support reflection, feedback and development.
- Psychological safety and its role in candid discussion, team learning and patient safety.
This course supports clinicians to examine how they think under uncertainty, respond when decisions are challenged and contribute to learning-focused cultures that strengthen clinical decision making.
Related courses
- Advanced Psychiatric Formulation and Strategic Management – A 2 Part Series – To build on the clinical decision-making themes explored in this on-demand course, clinicians may find this series particularly valuable for strengthening diagnostic formulation and reasoning in complex presentations. It explores heuristic traps, diagnostic flexibility, Bayesian reasoning and structured approaches to clinical decision-making.
- The Dignity of Risk with A/Prof Andrew Carroll – Clinicians interested in the ethical dimensions of clinical judgement may find this course highly relevant. It explores patient autonomy, duty of care, clinical risk and professional responsibility, with a focus on values-based decision-making where individual rights and clinical responsibilities need to be balanced.
- The Aggregation of Marginal Gains as a Philosophy of Clinical Care with Prof Michael Berk – This course complements the focus on improving clinical practice by examining how small, evidence-based changes across biological, psychological, lifestyle and systems factors can be integrated into personalised care. It provides a practical framework for identifying multiple opportunities for improvement in complex mental health presentations.
Academy members can access this course, along with a range of other courses and webinars, as part of their annual membership. This course is also available to purchase individually.
Please click on the respective links to take advantage of this offer.
Human Decision Making: From Fallibility to Psychological Safety For General Practitioners
This on-demand course, Human Decision Making: From Fallibility to Psychological Safety with Prof Jill Klein, is available in both video and audio formats. Participants receive a completion certificate and 1.5 CPD hours (EA) upon completion.
Strengthen your understanding of psychological safety in healthcare and how a growth mindset, candid discussion and reflection can support constructive responses to uncertainty, feedback, mistakes and diagnostic error in practice.
Course Information
- 1.5 hours
- 1.5 CPD
Inclusions
- Over 1 Hour of Video Learning
- Clinician Q&A and Discussion
- Course Completion Certificate
Material Downloads
- certificate
Instructors
Professor Jill Klein Guest speaker: Professorial Fellow in Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School | Professor of Marketing, Melbourne Business School
Professor Jill Klein is Professorial Fellow in Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School, and Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School. She has a PhD in Social Psychology, joined Melbourne Business School in 2009, and Melbourne Medical School in 2015.
Prof Klein has expertise in clinical decision making, leadership and resilience. Her research interests are medical decision-making and medical students, trainees, and doctor wellbeing. She has published widely, including in the British Medical Journal and Harvard Business Review, and is currently writing “Thriving in Medical School” with co-author Jordyn Feingold.
Dr. Sanil Rege Host - MBBS, MRCPsych, FRANZCP
With extensive teaching experience through psychiatry education initiatives, Sanil is recognised as a motivational training facilitator and educator who promotes insightful collaboration and discussion
As the Academic Lead of Psych Scene and Chief Editor of Psych Scene Hub, he aspires to make a difference in mental health by empowering Healthcare Professionals to advance their skills and career through the provision of specialised education and training
Sanil is also founder of Vita Healthcare, a private clinic in Mount Eliza specialising in adult mental healthcare, with over 20 years of clinical experience and 13 years of private practice experience treating disorders across the spectrum. He currently works in the community, across in-patient, consultation-liaison and addiction psychiatry spaces.
