Unbefriended: Medical Decision Making for the Incapacitated and Alone (FR438)

Can we improve treatment decision-making for incapacitated patients?

When patients cannot make their own treatment decisions, surrogates typically step in to do it for them. Surrogate decision-making is far from ideal, of course, as the surrogate may not know what the patient prefers or what best promotes her interests. One way to improve it would be to arm surrogates with information about what patients in similar circumstances tend to prefer, allowing them to ...

New York enacts surrogate decision-making legislation for incapacitated patients.

Braving Difficult Choices Alone: Children's and Adolescents' Medical Decision Making

OBJECTIVE What role should minors play in making medical decisions? The authors examined children's and adolescents' desire to be involved in serious medical decisions and the emotional consequences associated with them. METHODS Sixty-three children and 76 adolescents were presented with a cover story about a difficult medical choice. Participants were tested in one of four conditions: (1) ow...

Can We Improve Treatment Decision-Making for Incapacitated Patients? by ANNETTE RID AND DAVID WENDLER

When patients cannot make their own treatment decisions, surrogates typically step in to do it for them. Surrogate decision-making is far from ideal, of course, as the surrogate may not know what the patient prefers or what best promotes her interests. One way to improve it would be to arm surrogates with information about what patients in similar circumstances tend to prefer, allowing them to ...

From Medical Decision-making to Medical-cost-comparative Decision-making.

WHEN A PHYSICIAN GATHERS A PATIENT’S history, runs diagnostic tests and performs an evaluation, he or she is performing medicine’s most fundamental act: medical decision-making. Patient care is all about physicians bringing their education, training and personal experience to bear with a particular patient and his or her particular symptoms, disease or injury. Frequently, the course of treatmen...