Shared Decision Making In Health Care

Fundamental to health care shared decision-making is the doctrine of informed consent. This shared decision-making is one of the most advocated methodologies in the health care treatment decision. Shared decision-making is a method in which the doctor communicates to his patient all the sufficient risk and benefit information on all types of medical treatments and alternative medical treatments. The patient then shares with his doctor all his personal information that might make a particular medical treatment (or a side-effect) more (or less) bearable than other medical treatments. Then, the doctor and his patient in tandem use all the information to arrive at a joint decision on the medical treatment. In order to be actively involved …show more content…
The Canterbury ruling makes a mistake in adopting their “objective test” that regularly falls back upon the traditional medical customs and practice and doctors claiming the second exemption. Katz is correct in his objections here. The preferences for the disclosure of information, the taking on risk, quality of life consequences, and bearing the side-effect of the medical treatment can vary from one patient to another patient. Yet these variations in medical treatment decisions do not seem to reflect variances in the choices of patients. A doctor is not always in the captain’s chair to make medical treatment decisions when his patient’s values and preferences point to the most suitable choice of medical treatment. If shared decision-making is the goal, the doctor should not be in this position anyway. The doctor should also not constrain the disclosure of medical treatment alternatives in this scenario. Information means everything when patient choice is forefront. The patient should be the one to narrow down any possible choices. The disclosure of needs and preferences differ widely from each individual patient to another individual patient. This seems to indicate that our legal “objective tests” of informed consent that are contingent on the information needs of the “reasonable patient” would prevent some, if not many, patients from getting the amount …show more content…
Every day, a doctor must try to balance his duty to protect his patient’s physical well-being through benevolence and his duty to protect his patient’s autonomy, in order to build a foundation of effectual informed consent. The moral value of benevolence confers an ethical duty on physicians to act in their patient’s best interest and benefit. It is also the duty of a doctor to respect his patient’s right to have knowledge that is sufficient enough to make an autonomous medical treatment decision. This balancing act does not appear to be very easy. The doctor’s ethical duty of benevolence is at odds with his patient’s capacity to employ his right of self-determination. I think that most doctors want to provide the best care for their patients while at the same time recognize the preferences and values of their patients. This brings up the question of whether a doctor’s principal duty is to practice medicine for his patient's medical best interest and benefit or to support his patient’s decision-making autonomy. The courts, I don’t believe, have adequately answered this in order to sufficiently define all the specific requirements for informed consent within the scope of the