• J Gen Intern Med · Jun 2005

    Not all patients want to participate in decision making. A national study of public preferences.

    • Wendy Levinson, Audiey Kao, Alma Kuby, and Ronald A Thisted.
    • Department of Medicine, St. Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. wendy.levinson@utoronto.ca
    • J Gen Intern Med. 2005 Jun 1; 20 (6): 531535531-5.

    BackgroundThe Institute of Medicine calls for physicians to engage patients in making clinical decisions, but not every patient may want the same level of participation.Objectives1) To assess public preferences for participation in decision making in a representative sample of the U.S. population. 2) To understand how demographic variables and health status influence people's preferences for participation in decision making.Design And ParticipantsA population-based survey of a fully representative sample of English-speaking adults was conducted in concert with the 2002 General Social Survey (N= 2,765). Respondents expressed preferences ranging from patient-directed to physician-directed styles on each of 3 aspects of decision making (seeking information, discussing options, making the final decision). Logistic regression was used to assess the relationships of demographic variables and health status to preferences.Main ResultsNearly all respondents (96%) preferred to be offered choices and to be asked their opinions. In contrast, half of the respondents (52%) preferred to leave final decisions to their physicians and 44% preferred to rely on physicians for medical knowledge rather than seeking out information themselves. Women, more educated, and healthier people were more likely to prefer an active role in decision making. African-American and Hispanic respondents were more likely to prefer that physicians make the decisions. Preferences for an active role increased with age up to 45 years, but then declined.ConclusionThis population-based study demonstrates that people vary substantially in their preferences for participation in decision making. Physicians and health care organizations should not assume that patients wish to participate in clinical decision making, but must assess individual patient preferences and tailor care accordingly.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.