Nursing prioritization errors are systematic cognitive failures rather than random mistakes or simple knowledge deficits. The core vulnerability appears to be metacognitive: an impaired ability to detect and resolve conflict between an activated mental model and new, incongruent information. Interventions to reduce diagnostic and prioritization errors should explicitly train cognitive and metacognitive skills for managing incongruence and flexibly updating clinical representations.
Milani et al. (Fri,) studied this question.