**4. Results**

This section reports the findings obtained from the use of the checklist (Kahneman et al. 2011), already mentioned in the method section.

Looking at the biases, no evidence was found about the possibility that self-interest, sunk cost, disaster neglect, and loss aversion can lead the decision-making process of orthopaedics regarding patient follow-up. All three interviewees attested the presence of four biases in the decision-making process: Affect Heuristic (i.e., SH: "we do what literature tell us, avoiding customised follow-up"); Saliency, (i.e., SP: "a similar success in the past influences decisions above all"), Anchoring and Halo Effect (i.e., SD: "we make decisions based on the score that we apply; for sure decisions are influenced by decisions made by other departments or other clinical contexts").

Regarding the other biases analysed, their presence or absence depends on the interviewee characteristics. Groupthink and Availability came out from the SH and SD interviews but not from the one of SP. On the contrary, the Overconfidence affects the decision process of SP and SD but not the one of SH. Moreover, Confirmation bias emerged only from SH.

The results are summarised in the following table (Table 2).


### **Table2.**ResultsderivedfromtheapplicationofKahnemen'schecklist.

*patient itself"* SP **YES**


**Table 2.** *Cont.*

Source: Authors' elaboration inspired by Cristofaro (2017a).
