Abstract

The critical decision method is a semi-structured retrospective interview used mainly in researching professional decision making within the naturalistic decision making paradigm. There are currently, two main methods of performing analysis: ETA - Emergent Themes Analysis and the structured approach. The structured approach consists of five steps: 1. decision chart, 2. incident summary, 3. decision analysis tables, 4. identification of items of interest and 5. collation and comparison of common items of interest across incidents. Naturalistic decision making can be time-consuming, involve high stakes, poorly-structured problems, uncertain dynamic environments and ill-defined or competing goals. For this reason we will demonstrate how to the structured approach to perform an analysis using the example of a decision making situation in emergency medicine.