Patients Should Be More Involved In Medical Decision Making

A new study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that the level of shared decision making among adult patients who had discussed medical tests, medications and procedures with their doctors was not as high as expected. A national survey was conducted in 2011 by Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., Ph.D., from the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A cross section of American adults above the age of 40 were asked whether they had made 1 of 10 medical decisions and to describe how they discussed the issues with their health care providers...