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Patients are interested in receiving accurate diagnostic and prognostic information. Models and reasoning about diagnoses have been extensively investigated from a foundational perspective; however, for all its importance, prognosis has yet to receive a comparable degree of philosophical and methodological attention, and this may be due to the difficulties inherent in accurate prognostics. In the light of these considerations, we discuss a considerable body of critical thinking on the topic of prognostication and its strict relations with diagnostic reasoning, pointing out the distinction between nosographic and pathophysiological types of diagnosis and prognosis, underlying the importance of the explication and explanation processes. We then distinguish between various forms of hypothetical reasoning applied to reach diagnostic and prognostic judgments, comparing them with specific forms of abductive reasoning. The main thesis is that creative abduction regarding clinical hypotheses in diagnostic process is very unlikely to occur, whereas this seems to be often the case for prognostic judgments. The reasons behind this distinction are due to the different types of uncertainty involved in diagnostic and prognostic judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale Diagnostic systems exist in many disciplines. Strengths and weaknesses of such diagnostic systems vary considerably within and among disciplinary domains of the health sciences. The logical framework behind each diagnostic process involves identifying a condition, seeking causes, establishing a prognosis and a treatment. Notably, a clinical diagnosis is a judgment focused on the present, aiming to cluster events associated with a disease. Diagnostic judgment focuses on the past when it attempts to isolate possible causes, and towards the future when it indicates prognoses and treatments. Aims and objectives The paper suggests ways to differentiate nursing diagnosis from medical diagnoses, discussing ontology and abductive reasoning for doctors and nurses. Conclusions The proposed logical framework has been applied to a nursing taxonomy-based diagnostic system in order to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses consistently with the epistemology of a diagnostic judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]