I think so in select cases, especially when it comes to elective and some outpatient scenarios.
However, when patients admitted to the hospital or in need of emergency care, the information asymmetry is heightened and patients have much less input in their management course.
This piece likens the relationship between doctors and patients to a parent and teenager:
The teenager is almost a fully functioning adult, able to make their own decisions, but they are not old enough to be independent from the parent. A good parent makes decisions with consultation from the teenager. And ultimately the parent is responsible if anything bad happens to the teenager. There are many adult concepts a teenager cannot understand without extensive explanation. Even after such explanation they still may not understand. Thus it is not feasible to explain the pros/cons of every treatment or medication, the potential side effects, sequelae, the recent literature on outcomes, and the whole volume of information out there on every treatment and drug. Doing so would be unacceptable, and, even if you did do this, the patient may still not understand everything.
Related posts:
- Patients as consumers
- How HIPAA harms patients
- Reader take: Moral hazard, and whether patients should consider cost in their health care decisions
- Should patients lie to their doctors?
- Marketing stents to consumers
- New Tool to Aid Consumers of Health Care
- Should patients be treated as customers, and if so, are they always right?
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 3 comments }
This post speaks to the issue of whether democratizing knowledge can democratize expertise. I blogged about this recently at Science Based Medicine: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=267
Important to discuss!
That “parent and teenager” analogy sounds more like a rather feeble attempt to justify not taking the time necessary to talk to patients so that they can participate in decisions regarding their treatment. The analogy falls apart as soon as you enter money into the equation. A parent is usually supporting the teen and thus asserts some right to make decisions for him/her (”…as long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll do as I say!…”). With some exceptions, patients generally pay for their care, even if through a third party, and therefore it certainly is a consumer transaction. By denying the sharing of information, you create and enforce a certain master/child relationship, but it’s nothing that’s necessarily inherent to the interaction. It is what you make it.
Unless my mental status were compromised, or were in a true emergency, If I were not offered a satisfactory level of information to my questions, I would not take any step until I had second-guessed him quite thoroughly about my specific situation by researching it myself, and weighing the option best for the context of my own life and my own definition of optimal outcome.
Comments on this entry are closed.