The three-decision problem in medical decision making

Medical researchers and policy makers face decisions that require a choice from among two or more alternatives. Whereas traditional hypothesis tests cannot always serve the needs of the practitioner who needs to make a decision, a problem formulation that assigns losses to various incorrect decisions offers several advantages. With three possible decisions this approach offers a precise representation of the pragmatic and explanatory views of decision making. It enables the investigator to incorporate in the problem specification his attitudes about the seriousness of various errors by guiding him, before he sees the data, to a choice of asymmetric tail probabilities. It also suggests a reformulation of the P-value that can accommodate some of the difficulties practitioners face.     

我国公共卫生体系建设发展历程、现状、问题与策略

  目的   构建公共卫生人才的医德培育模型,进一步增强公共卫生人才医德培育实效。  方法   对110名公共卫生领域专家进行问卷调查,初步筛选医德培育的主要维度与重要因素,运用层次分析法确定各维度和因素权重并进行一致性检验。  结果   构建的医德培育模型包括8项一级指标、27项二级指标,一致性检验λ_max ＝ 8,CR < 0.1,RI = 1.41,符合一致性要求,构建的矩阵比较合理。基于模型计算出各指标权重,其中一级指标位列前3位的分别为医学伦理决策、医学心理契约、医学行为机会,其权重分别为0.2836、0.2382、0.1435。  结论   构建的医德培育模型具有一定的科学性、客观性和实用性,可为进一步完善公共卫生人才医德培育体系提供理论支撑。     

Teaching ethics: preparing health services managers for ethical decision making.

This article offers general comments on the necessity for ethics education and proposes a model for ethics education for health services managers. The model incorporates the premises on which ethics education should be based and the suggested content, methods, and approaches at various levels for such a program.     

Social work influence on interdisciplinary ethical decision making in health care settings

Because of structural and philosophical changes in health care, social work practitioners are having to interact more with other practitioners in health care settings. Many of those interactions are interdisciplinary and often involve an understanding of the application of professional values and ethics. The authors have suggested that social workers' influence on ethical decision making is correlated directly to their ability to contribute to those decisions. In their study, the authors tested five independent variables and one dependent variable to show the factors that are related significantly to social workers' influence on ethical decision-making processes in multidisciplinary health care settings.     

Evidence-based decision making for vaccines: the need for an ethical foundation

Evidence-based decision making (EBDM) is a tool to assess the value of medical interventions by weighing costs and health outcomes that has increasingly been applied to vaccines. However, many of the ethical considerations that support EBDM when used to evaluate therapeutic care do not readily translate to prevention. This mismatch can result in policy decisions that produce unanticipated negative consequences, including public resistance. In its emphasis on quantifiable outcomes, EBDM invokes the ethical principle of rule-utilitarianism, which values the optimal long-run balance of benefit over harm. Vaccines raise a number of competing ethical concerns in ways that individual medical treatments do not. They rely on widespread compliance for effectiveness, which can limit individual autonomy, emphasize population over individual effects, which can obscure the imperative of beneficence to help the vulnerable, require a just allocation process within populations, and sometimes challenge strong social norms. For EBDM to effectively guide vaccine policy makers, such as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in the United States, an ethical foundation is needed that systematically considers all relevant values and transparently places vaccination recommendations in the context of social norms and individual concerns.     

Assessing general practice clinical decision making skills: the key features approach

The key feature problem (KFP) is an innovative assessment format that tests clinical decision making skills by focussing on only the critical steps -- or 'key features' -- of each decision, thereby increasing the number of problems that can be answered in a 3 hour examination. It has been used successfully in The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Examination for Fellowship and is gaining in popularity in other high stakes testing settings. This article describes how the KFP paper is designed and constructed, how the pass mark is set, and how the approach performs.     

Resource allocation after a nuclear detonation incident: unaltered standards of ethical decision making

This article provides practical ethical guidance for clinicians making decisions after a nuclear detonation, in advance of the full establishment of a coordinated response. We argue that the utilitarian maxim of the greatest good for the greatest number, interpreted only as "the most lives saved," needs refinement. We take the philosophical position that utilitarian efficiency should be tempered by the principle of fairness in making decisions about providing lifesaving interventions and palliation. The most practical way to achieve these goals is to mirror the ethical precepts of routine clinical practice, in which 3 factors govern resource allocation: order of presentation, patient's medical need, and effectiveness of an intervention. Although these basic ethical standards do not change, priority is given in a crisis to those at highest need in whom interventions are expected to be effective. If available resources will not be effective in meeting the need, then it is unfair to expend them and they should be allocated to another patient with high need and greater expectation for survival if treated. As shortage becomes critical, thresholds for intervention become more stringent. Although the focus of providers will be on the victims of the event, the needs of patients already receiving care before the detonation also must be considered. Those not allocated intervention must still be provided as much appropriate comfort, assistance, relief of symptoms, and explanations as possible, given the available resources. Reassessment of patients' clinical status and priority for intervention also should be conducted with regularity.     

Ethical decision making by family physicians

One hundred thirty-one Illinois family physicians, 53 general practitioners, and 65 general internists responded to a survey on medical ethics. From these data emerged a profile of the family physicians and an identification of the ethical problems they encounter most frequently in their practice: (1) issues about contraception, (2) pain control, (3) telling the patient the truth, (4) sexual issues, (5) informed consent, (6) confidentiality, (7) controlling patients' behavior with medication, (8) sterilization, (9) professional etiquette, (10) patients' rights, and (11) peer review.     

Clinical reasoning and decision making in practice: a 30-year-old man with unexplained coma

A 30-year-old man known to have a factor-IX deficiency was presented at the emergency department with unexplained coma. After immediate treatment with factor IX, a CT-scan of the brain revealed no intracerebral haemorrhage. However, blood tests showed severe hyponatraemia, low serum osmolarity and high urine-sodium excretion consistent with the Syndrome of Inappropriate Antiduretic Hormone Secretion (SIADH). Therapy with hypertonic saline was instituted resulting in a gradual rise in the serum-sodium concentration. The cause of the hyponatraemia however remained unclear. After repeat history taking the patient mentioned the use of desmopressin for nocturia. Hyponatraemia as a complication of desmopressin use occurs in 8% of adult patients treated for nocturia. Direct availability of a patient's drug history, by means of an electronic record for instance, could avoid unnecessary tests and delay in diagnosis.     

Clinical reasoning and decision making in practice. A 9-year-old boy with isolated splenomegaly

Splenomegaly was discovered by chance in a 9-year-old boy who had no further complaints. Apart from splenomegaly and mild thrombocytopenia, no other pathological condition was found in the first instance. Ultrasound revealed a spleen with a median length of 16.7 cm. Blood tests remained stable and a bone marrow biopsy showed no pathology either. Doppler ultrasound of the splenic vessels was normal; screening for a coagulation disorder was not performed. A wait-and-see policy was instituted. Later, the patient developed haematemesis because ofoesophageal varices. It turned out that he had portal hypertension caused by thrombosis of the portal vein. The underlying cause was a heterozygous protein-C deficiency. Treatment consisted of anticoagulant therapy and a mesocaval shunt procedure. Splenomegaly is an atypical clinical manifestation in childhood. Coagulation disorders should be considered in children with splenomegaly.