Behavioural psychology research: Comparison of patient and doctor decision making frameworks
Misalignment between expectations and outcomes is a key issue in the shared decision making process between patients and doctors.
Our aim is to identify the extent to which patients and doctors share mutual motivations, goals and expectations, and whether any misalignment is systematic or unique to a given patient doctor consultation. This knowledge will inform how the decision support intervention is designed to bring patients and doctors into closer alignment during shared decision making. Data will be collected through structured interviews.
Participants will be given surgical scenarios generated from the experience of focus group participants in project 1.2. In the estimation task, patients and doctors will individually consider these scenarios. Based on their own motivations, goals, preferred surgical outcomes and perceived risks of surgery, they will estimate the likelihood that their goals, preferred outcomes and perceived risks will occur across different future time-points (1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months). In the perspective-taking task, similar scenarios will be considered, but patients and doctors will reverse roles (i.e. the patient adopts the role of doctor, and vice versa) and will imagine the motivations, goals, preferred outcomes and perceived risks of surgery of someone in their adopted role, and again estimate the likelihood that these events will occur over different future time points