Thin Slicing Research Paper

How many times have you depended on a doctor with your life? Could you always explain exactly how you felt, or was the doctor helping you figure out the exact pain? Many don’t realize how important it is for the medical field to use the technique of thin slicing, the 5 second judgement of someone based upon their expressions. Patients of all kinds depend on doctors to help them in any situation, even when they cannot express exactly their symptoms. Elders, adults, and especially children can not always grasp what pain they are experiencing and how severe it might be. That 's when the advanced skill of thin slicing comes into play. All doctors that use thin slicing are subconsciously giving themselves an instantly better understanding of the

In an emergency, doctors use thin slicing more than ever to quickly take action and improve a patient 's chances of survival. Sometimes, using the thin slicing technique is what saves a person’s life. Dr. Jerome Groopman, the author of How Doctors Think, invites the audience into his point of view as a doctor to demonstrate how thin slicing is used on the ER floor. For almost all medical professionals, quick thinking is vital in a moment of crisis and the physiological process is explained by Groopman: The mind of a doctor works like a magnet, pulling in cues from all different directions at an extreme rapid rate, really in a matter of seconds. This is what many doctors call “flesh and blood decision making” (page 6). The “fast and frugal” part of the thinking, where your actions work ahead of your thoughts, are the core of flesh and blood decision making. Dr. Groopman explains how snap judgment is not taught, but is developed in the moment, right when a new doctor steps onto the medical floor. He says, “[snap judgments and thin slicing] serve as the foundation of all mature medical thinking, it can save lives…” (page 7). Thin slicing and snap judgements cannot be taught in medical school, it is more like a reflex a doctor develops with more experience. A doctor who subconsciously combines the skills of “flesh and blood decision making” and “fast and frugal” actions will be more successful when dealing with a chaotic situation. There is not time to collect data and

In Pediatrics, snap judgments and thin slicing are used the greatest out of any branch in medicine and are the crucial components to pediatric care. For a young child, understanding pain and how severe a situation might be is beyond their physical mentality. To comprehend exactly why or where there is pain is hard for child, none the less impossible to relay to a doctor. A quote from the article “The Reliability and Validity Of The Thin Slice Technique: Observational Research On Video Recorded Medical Interactions“ by Tanina Suzanne Foster, communicates what doctors look for when working with a child. The following says, “In the medical field specifically, thin slicing a child can be a life or death outcome due to the fact that children, especially the young, cannot express their source of pain or cannot comprehend how, exactly, they feel. The doctor must use things such as the child’s voice, facial expressions, and body movements to decipher how the child feels or how serious a situation might be…”(53). A child depends on a doctor because they can 't help themselves. Due to the fact that many are too young to understand what is happening or the fear of being in a serious situation or environment leads them to not open up about their pain. A physician who can thin slice a young patient and tell what is wrong just by observation will be far more successful. A doctor who does not have the advanced skills of thin slicing a young patient may make a wrong assumption or