Definition of Uncertainty

Uncertainty: You may be uncertain why "uncertainty" deserves a place in a medical dictionary but some would say that uncertainty is a key element in medicine.

"The core predicament of medicine -- the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult and being a part of a society that pays the bills they run up so vexing -- is uncertainty," observed the surgeon Atul Gawande. "Medicine's ground state is uncertainty. And wisdom -- for both patients and doctors -- is defined by how one copes with it."

Source: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. By Atul Gawande. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2002.