consider the potential harms

Consider the potential harms of both a missed diagnosis and the treatment. A. It is very harmful to miss certain diagnoses, such as MI or pulmonary embolism, while it is not so harmful to miss others, such as mild carpal tunnel syndrome. You need to be very certain that life-threatening diseases are not present (that is, have a very low pretest probability), before excluding them without testing. B. Some treatments, such as thrombolytics, are more harmful than others, such as oral antibiotics; you need to be very certain that potentially harmful treatments are needed (that is, the pretest probability is very high) before prescribing them without testing.