I also press F, but for grading the author, not as a sign of respect.
It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence into the reliability of expert assessments, when this is the kind of textbook used to train them.
I also press F, but for grading the author, not as a sign of respect.
It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence into the reliability of expert assessments, when this is the kind of textbook used to train them.
If that were the intention behind the question, it would demonstrate a poor understanding of likelyhood in a strictly analytical sense. The most likely diagnosis would still be none of the options given, but literally “None”.
If it were meant as a simple “Gotcha”-Question, it is semantically poorly constructed - and also ethically questionable to teach a lesson of “select the least wrong option from a preselected set of permitted answers” in the context of medical practise.
edit: wording
I have no idea why you think it is the least incorrect answer. As far as I know, it is spot on. The disorder gripe I kind of get but not why that would be incorrect in any way.
Okay… I am not sure where the miscommunication occurs. Maybe it is because I am looking at the process of diagnosis through the lens of statistics and not from the angle of someone implementing a strategy of eliminating possibilities one by one.
As other commenters have pointed out, there is a possibility remaining unadressed by the question and choices of answers, that is very important in practise: That the student is completely healthy. And even under the assumption, he had anything, the evidence presented is too sparse to make a call like that, irregardless of what little information is there looks spot on or not.
It’s okay to admit that a case is inconclusive. That’s what science has to deal with all the time. As a diagnostician, you MUST have the mindset of a detective, or you’re not a good diagnostician. Going by the book (working down checklists, making simple choices) will mostly work, but when it fails, the potential for harm is great. The best fitting answer a doctor can think of can still be the wrong one while the real answer is hiding somewhere unexpected. I wish the workbook above wouldn’t ignore this.
As the answer is having obsessive-compulsive traits it means that there is not enough information to make a diagnosis and based on the existing information those traits do not majorly negatively affect the student’s life so the person is, based on known information, most likely healthy apart from some possibly more or less disorderly traits. The diagnostic process requires doctors to use actually most fitting answer as even though it doesn’t necessarily mean that is the diagnosis, diagnostic criteria need to be filled even though they are not 100% specific. Evaluation of diagnostic criteria happens every couple of years where they will try to get more specific and sensitive. But that is a lot more involved process than one person changing their opinion of the criteria they use. In medicine, especially physical medicine, you can’t always wait for an iron-clad diagnosis and sometimes you can’t make iron-clad diagnosis even with the best testing available. Medicine is almost as much art as it is science and for a good reason. And it really is far from finished. In both the science part, medical ethics and biases in medicine are being developed all the time. Art part can be taught but only through experience.
Is it perfect, no. But there are also reasons behind why the question is put like this.