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This series of articles challenges some popular myths about supposedly ‘ideal’ treatment plans, and is designed to provoke reflection and stimulate debate. It explains the concept of ‘satisficing’ (as opposed to ‘maximizing’) in dentistry, and illustrates how subconscious bias and self-interests might lead supposed experts to promote arbitrary aspirational standards and confuse them with what the law expects (the Bolam Test standard) and what is genuinely in the best interests of an individual patient. It is argued that sound, patient-centred pragmatic planning and treatment is equally valid, with wider applicability than routinely defaulting to a self-serving ‘maximalist’ approach, often on spurious grounds.
CPD/Clinical Relevance: The ‘satisficing’ concept has wide and profound application across many fields of dentistry; this first part explains the basic principles and how and why it is relevant to various aspects of practical dentistry and also to our understanding of professionalism.
Article
‘Satisficing’ is a word made from combining ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’. It means choosing something, or a solution, that is sufficient for it to be satisfactory for the purposes at that time. ‘Satisficing’ is often used as a contrast to ‘maximizing’. ‘Maximizing’ involves seeking the single, supposedly best, outcome or solution to a problem.
Satisficing might sound like a new and unfamiliar word – or one invented by the authors of this article – but in fact ‘satisficing’ was described as long ago as 1956 by an eminent American economist and psychologist named Herbert Simon who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 1978. In his acceptance speech, Herbert Simon stated that decision-makers can ‘satisfice’ either by finding optimal solutions for a simplified world, or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world.1
Satisficing is a ‘cognitive heuristic’, which is a posh term in psychology for what most dentists would call a ‘rule of thumb’. Heuristics are shortcuts that our minds take to arrive at an acceptable decision quickly. We do that frequently in real life, but not necessarily when it comes to dentistry, or when dealing with unusual dental problems.
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