Working Paper: “Too Much Medicine” - Investigating how Physicians’ Professional Values Influence Overtreatment in Oncology
Type
journal article
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
Overtreatment of low-risk disease is one of the most important problems in medicine, yet there has been little conceptual and empirical research on the factors influencing this phenomenon. This study examines how biased heuristics in expert decision-making influence physicians’ treatment decisions by promoting more defensive decision-making behavior. Combining theories of Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) and the sociology of the professions, we theorize that emotional dispositions and professional values may lead to cautious decision patterns and heuristics which ultimately results in overtreatment. Our analysis of a sample of cancer specialists suggests that stress from uncertainty in patient care, a professional feeling of responsibility, and value congruence explain a substantial amount of the variance in health professionals’ decision-making and their tendency to recommend treatment for low-risk prostate cancer. Implications for future research on expert decision-making and overtreatment in medicine are discussed.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
Global Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation
Refereed
No
Subject(s)
Contact Email Address
barbara.schmidt@unisg.ch
Eprints ID
268993
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Name
Too much medicine_Alexandria.pdf
Size
434.42 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c494b72de53fa389b38843a9d4a1e3cd