C.G.M (Charlotte) van sassen, MD, PhD student

Charlotte van Sassen is doing a PhD on improving clinical reasoning education using malpractice claims. This research is a collaboration between iMERR and the Department of General Practice. For this research, access to the database of the largest liability insurer in the Netherlands (VvAA) has been obtained. In addition to her research activities, Charlotte is a general practitioner and lecturer at the Department of General Practice. She is also the founder of Huisartsen van Nederland, a company that provides patient flow management software based on an AI triage tool for general practice.

van Sassen, C. G. M., van den Berg, P. J., Mamede, S., Knol, L., Eikens-Jansen, M. P., van den Broek, W. W., et al. (2022). Identifying and prioritizing educational content from a malpractice claims database for clinical reasoning education in the vocational training of general practitioners. Advances in Health Sciences Education.

Van Sassen, C., Mamede, S., Bos, M., Van Den Broek, W., Bindels, P., & Zwaan, L. (2023). Do malpractice claim clinical case vignettes enhance diagnostic accuracy and acceptance in clinical reasoning education during GP training? BMC Medical Education, 23(1), 474.

Lecturer for residents and supervisors at the Department of General Practice, ErasmusMC

General Practitioner, founder and CEO Huisartsen van Nederland.

ZonMW HGOG grant

PhD Learning from mistakes: Defining case descriptions to improve clinical reasoning education.

Diagnostic errors are the most common cause of patient liability claims against primary care physicians. It is estimated that diagnostic errors occur in 5% of all primary care patients and are more likely than other types of errors to have serious consequences, such as death. Diagnosing is a complex task and clinical reasoning education (CRE), e.g., practicing with fictitious case vignettes, is therefore an important part of general practitioner training. The use of malpractice cases as vignettes is a promising approach for improving CRE, because malpractice cases may represent knowledge gaps with a relevant impact on patients and can provide a variety of atypical and context-rich examples. However, it is not yet clear how these vignettes should be presented, as malpractice cases can evoke strong emotions that may either facilitate or hinder learning. This research investigates whether diagnostic errors and malpractice claims in clinical case vignettes are effective for improving CRE in general practice (GP) residents.