IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v36y1993i7p915-924.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Towards understanding treatment preferences of hospital physicians

Author

Listed:
  • Denig, P.
  • Haaijer-Ruskamp, F.M.
  • Wesseling, H.
  • Versluis, A.

Abstract

Seventy-two physicians working in a university hospital in The Netherlands were interviewed to clarify their decision-making process when choosing drugs of preference. Each physician was questioned about the treatment choices for either one or two general case descriptions. The physicians considered only a limited set of different treatment options, on an average 1.7-5.0.Further, the physicians expressed their expectancies as regards various treatment alternatives, and the value or weight they attached to the principle aspects of a treatment. An analytical decision model was used as a reference to gain insight into the extent to which the physicians make decisions based on their own subjective expectancies and values. This model assumes that physicians follow a maximizing strategy by choosing the treatment they personally assess as optimal. It was found that a model including only biomedical expectancies and values predicted the preferred treatment correctly in no more than 53% of the cases. Sometimes, biomedical aspects were disregarded that should have been relevant according to the physicians themselves. Adding aspects of the social environment and experiences improved the prediction of the model substantially; 3 out of 4 treatment preferences could be understood by following an analytical maximizing strategy including biomedical aspects and social aspects and experiences. In the remaining cases, the physicians were not able to describe their decision in terms of this maximizing strategy, which points at the use of alternative decision strategies. One alternative decision strategy mentioned by the physicians was a 'follow-the-routine' decision rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Denig, P. & Haaijer-Ruskamp, F.M. & Wesseling, H. & Versluis, A., 1993. "Towards understanding treatment preferences of hospital physicians," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 915-924, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:7:p:915-924
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(93)90083-G
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lin, Shu-Jou & Jan, Kuan-An & Kao, Jen-Tse, 2011. "Colleague interactions and new drug prescribing behavior: The case of the initial prescription of antidepressants in Taiwanese medical centers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(8), pages 1208-1213.
    2. Prosser, Helen & Walley, Tom, 2006. "New drug prescribing by hospital doctors: The nature and meaning of knowledge," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1565-1578, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:7:p:915-924. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.