Editors' preface; Introduction; Part I. The Art and Science of Uncertainty: 1. variations in physician practice: the role of uncertainty D. M. Eddy; 2. From technical rationality to reflection-in-action D. A. Schön; 3. Clinical intuition and clinical analysis: expertise and the cognitive continuum R. M. Hamm; Part II. Modelling the Clinician and the Clinical Task: 4. Psychology of clinical reasoning A. S. Elstein and G. Bordage; 5. How physicians use clinical information in diagnosing pulmonary embolism: an application of conjoint analysis R. S. Wigton, V. L. Hoellerich and K. D. Patil; 6. You can't systematize human judgment: dyslexia R. M. Dawes; 7. Factors influencing the use of a decision rule in a probabilistic task H. R. Arkes, R. M. Dawes and C. Christensen; 8. Accepting error to make less error H. J. Einhorn; 9. Computer-aided diagnosis of acute abdominal pain: the British experience F. T. de Dombal; 10. The art of diagnosis: solving the clinicopathological exercise D. M. Eddy and C. H. Clanton; 11. Toward a theory of clinical expertise J. P. Kassirer, B. J. Kuipers and G. A. Gorry; 12. Formal and knowledge-based methods in decision technology J. Fox; Part III. The Decision Analytic Approach to Clinical Decisions: 13. Clinical decisionmaking P. Doubilet and B. J. McNeil; 14. Recurrent deep venous thrombosis in pregnancy: analysis of the risks and benefits of anticoagulation K. Klein and S. G. Pauker; 15. Comparison of physicians' decisions regarding estrogen replacement therapy for menopausal women and decisions derived from a decision analytic model A. S. Elstein, G. B. Holzman, M. M. Ravitch et al; 16. Hypothesis evaluation from a Bayesian perspective B. Fischhoff and R. Beyth-Marom; 17. Differential diagnosis and the competing-hypotheses heuristic: a practical approach to judgment under uncertainty and Bayesian probability F. M. Wolf, L. D. Gruppen and J. E. Billi; 18. Physicians' use of probabilistic information in a real clinical setting J. J. J. Christensen-Szalanski and J. B. Bushyhead; 19. Hindsight bias among physicians weighing the likelihood of diagnoses H. R. Arkes, P. D. Saville, R. L. Wortmann et al; 20. How decisions are reached: physician and patient S. A. Eraker and P. Politser; 21. The measurement of patients' values in medicine H. Llewellyn-Thomas, H. J. Sutherland, R. Tibshirani et al; 22. Clinical decision analysis B. Fischhoff; Part IV. The Contexts of Clinical Decisions: 23. Rationing hospital care: lessons from Britain W. B. Schwartz and H. J. Aaron; 24. resource allocation decisions inhealth care: a role for quality of life assessments? M. F. Drummond; 25. Economic evaluation of neonatal intensive care of very-low-birth-weight infants M. H. Boyle, G. W. Torrance, J. C. Sinclair and S. P. Horwood; 26. An analytic approach to resolving problems in medical ethics D. Candee and B. Puka; Commentary C. Fletcher; 27. Ethics and resource allocation: an economist's view A. McGuire; 28. Informed consent: court viewpoints and medical decision making D. J. Mazur; 29. Forgive and remember: managing medical failure C. L. Bosk; 30. Why doctors don't disclose uncertainty J. Katz.