Where does diagnosis collide?

The act, and its conclusion, of identifying the specific disease or condition that accounts for a patient's signs and symptoms. Kassirer's 1989 Diagnostic reasoning described how a clinician moves from findings to a working answer by generating and testing competing candidate conditions, the differential diagnosis, until one best explains the evidence and is confirmed against diagnostic criteria. The referent is a judgment about what is wrong inside a living body, reached from clinical evidence, not a fault located in a machine, a problem found in a company, or a written statement that separates one species from another.[1]

Unit

A named disease or condition assigned to one patient's illness

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Reached by history, examination, and tests, then checked against a differential and formal diagnostic criteria

The task of detecting that a technical system is not behaving as designed and working out which of its components is at fault. Reiter's 1987 A theory of diagnosis from first principles gave a formal, model-based account: given a description of how the system should behave and an observation that conflicts with it, diagnosis is the search for the smallest set of components whose failure would explain the discrepancy. The referent is a computed explanation for a malfunction in an engineered system, derived from a model, not an illness in a patient, a weakness in an organization, or the defining features of a taxon.[2]

Unit

A minimal set of faulty components that explains an observation

Recovery means

Once a fault is isolated, the component can be repaired or replaced to restore correct behaviour

Measured by

Computed by comparing observed behaviour against a model of the intended system and locating the conflicts

The systematic assessment of how an organization is functioning and where its problems lie, carried out before any attempt to change it. Weisbord's 1976 Organizational diagnosis offered a six-box model that prompts the consultant to look in six places, purposes, structure, relationships, rewards, leadership, and helpful mechanisms, for the gaps between what an organization intends and what it actually does. The referent is a structured reading of a human organization's health, aimed at guiding change, not a disease in a body, a fault in a machine, or the characters that distinguish a species.[3]

Unit

An assessment of one organization's functioning across defined areas

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Gathered by interviews, surveys, and observation, then mapped onto a diagnostic model such as the six boxes