Inattentional Blindness: Failure to Notice Something Unexpected in Plain Sight Among Surgical and Medical Trainees.

This article focuses on the cognitive phenomenon of Inattentional Blindness (IB) among surgical and internal medicine residents, examining their ability to detect expected and unexpected visual stimuli during clinical tasks. The study found that internal medicine residents more frequently identified a clinically relevant lung nodule on CT scans, while surgical residents were more likely to notice an irrelevant but conspicuous stimulus (a gorilla image) embedded in the scans. These differences may relate to specialty-specific training and clinical focus. The findings highlight the presence of IB early in medical training and suggest the importance of educating residents about perceptual limitations to improve clinical performance and patient safety. Future research is recommended to develop strategies to reduce IB across medical specialties.