Also, is there some sort of reasonable threshold? It's not as though strokes are extremely rare, though they are rare compared to getting drunk on Friday night.
Good question, To make a list of criteria for what is "reasonable threshold" for each disease, given each symptom, and each test, such a thing would probably be more trouble than it's worth for the simple in-the-room tests, but I'm sure they exist for expensive/harmful things like biopsies or CT scans. In this case, I think the presentation exceeds the threshold to consider a stroke, but not enough to do costly tests.
In general, we're drilled with the general algorithm: 1) a long list of "triggers" that says, "if you see this/thes...
Yesterday in medical school, we had a lecture on common mistakes doctors make. I saw this slide:
Attribution Errors
Confirmation Bias
Commission Bias
Omission Bias
Anchoring