Emotional Analgesia and the Decline of Rational Decision Making in Emergency Medicine

Emergency Medicine is a cognitive specialty because its core deliverable is accurate choice under uncertainty. Pauker and Kassirer's threshold model describes how rational decisions are made when information is incomplete, yet contemporary practice has drifted away from this framework. Rapid assessment protocols and the routine use of non-specific investigations create the appearance of efficiency but displace the cognitive work that produces clinical judgement. These practices reinforce relief-seeking decision making-behaviour that reduces internal discomfort rather than diagnostic uncertainty. CRP exemplifies this pattern: it generates data that feels objective but rarely changes management and instead reinforces dependence on testing. If Emergency Medicine wants to produce threshold-based decision makers, then training environments must deliberately restore conditions that require probabilistic reasoning, articulate pre-test probabilities and withhold low-utility investigations. Otherwise, the specialty will continue to select for and reproduce relief-seeking behaviour.