Clinical and Actuarial Judgment

Studies that have weighed against clinical and actuarial judgements show that the actuarial method is exceedingly superior to clinical judgment. For a clear contrast to be reached between them, decisions must be arrived at while using the same data. The only leeway should be that the strategies employed to make the decisions can be from various sources.

Actuarial judgment focuses its decisions on prior experiences while clinical judgment uses experience with various cases in point. Back in the day I had to decide on taking a job that was paying exceptionally high salary. This was objected by the fact that I was still doing my end year exams that was a prerequisite for my graduation that year. I technically had to use actuarial judgment since at that moment there was an acute lack of jobs in the country and many scams were out to squander people’s money, so I shoved it. If I had used clinical judgment, I would not have graduated as well as lost my money and time.

In another situation, I had to choose between getting rid of my wife’s baby or my wife since she had complications during birth. I had to do the former since the baby was immature. Getting rid of its mother who is also a wife to me would have done more harm than good to me and the baby. In actuarial judgment, I would have kept both of them, but it would have turned out more complicated if I had to treat at the same moment, both the baby and the mother, and maybe eventually losing both of them. Actuarial judgment has widely been used and is commonly recognized as more exact and objective than clinical judgment.

When making predictions, clinical judgment is frequently inferior to employing a formula deduced from empirical relationships between data and result. Human beings are not perfectly reliable when making decisions.