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Decision-making during obstetric emergencies: A narrative approach.

ABSTRACT: This study aims to explore how physicians make sense of and give meaning to their decision-making during obstetric emergencies. Childbirth is considered safe in the wealthiest parts of the world. However, variations in both intervention rates and delivery outcomes have been found between countries and between maternity units of the same country. Interventions can prevent neonatal and maternal morbidity but may cause avoidable harm if performed without medical indication. To gain insight into the possible causes of this variation, we turned to first-person perspectives, and particularly physicians' as they hold a central role in the obstetric team. This study was conducted at four maternity units in the southern region of Sweden. Using a narrative approach, individual in-depth interviews ignited by retelling an event and supported by art images, were performed between Oct. 2018 and Feb. 2020. In total 17 obstetricians and gynecologists participated. An inductive thematic narrative analysis was used for interpreting the data. Eight themes were constructed: (a) feeling lonely, (b) awareness of time, (c) sense of responsibility, (d) keeping calm, (e) work experience, (f) attending midwife, (g) mind-set and setting, and (h) hedging. Three decision-making perspectives were constructed: (I) individual-centered strategy, (II) dialogue-distributed process, and (III) chaotic flow-orientation. This study shows how various psychological and organizational conditions synergize with physicians during decision-making. It also indicates how physicians gave decision-making meaning through individual motivations and rationales, expressed as a perspective. Finally, the study also suggests that decision-making evolves with experience, and over time. The findings have significance for teamwork, team training, patient safety and for education of trainees.

SUBMITTER: Raoust GM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8791468 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The successful management of a childbirth emergency will be dependent on the decision-making of involved obstetricians and gynecologists. Individual differences in decision-making may be explained through personality traits. The objectives of the present study were (I) to describe personality trait levels of obstetricians and gynecologists and (II) to examine the relationship between obstetricians' and gynecologists' personality traits and decision-making styles (Individual, Team and Flow) in childbirth emergencies; also controlling for cognitive ability (ICAR-3), age, sex and years of clinical experience. Obstetricians and gynecologists, members of the Swedish Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology (N = 472) responded to an online questionnaire that included a simplified version of the Five Factor Model of personality (IPIP-NEO), and 15 questions concerning childbirth emergencies based on a model of decision-making styles (Individual, Team and Flow). The data was analyzed using Pearson's correlation analysis and multiple linear regression. Swedish obstetricians and gynecologists scored (P < 0.001) lower on Neuroticism (Cohen's d = - 1.09) and higher on Extraversion (d = 0.79), Agreeableness (d = 1.04) and Conscientiousness (d = 0.97) compared to the general population. The most important trait was Neuroticism, which correlated with the decision-making styles Individual (r = - 0.28) and Team (r = 0.15), while for example Openness only trivially correlated with Flow. Multiple linear regression showed that personality traits with covariates explained up to 18% of decision-making styles. Obstetricians and gynecologists have notably more distinct personality levels than the general population, and their personality traits relate to decision-making in childbirth emergencies. The assessment of medical errors in childbirth emergencies and prevention through individualized training should take account of these findings.

Project description:Many real-world situations require navigating decisions for both reward and threat. While there has been significant progress in understanding mechanisms of decision-making and mediating neurocircuitry separately for reward and threat, there is limited understanding of situations where reward and threat contingencies compete to create approach-avoidance conflict (AAC). Here, we leverage computational learning models, independent component analysis (ICA), and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) approaches to understand decision-making during a novel task that embeds concurrent reward and threat learning and manipulates congruency between reward and threat probabilities. Computational modeling supported a modified reinforcement learning model where participants integrated reward and threat value into a combined total value according to an individually varying policy parameter, which was highly predictive of decisions to approach reward vs avoid threat during trials where the highest reward option was also the highest threat option (i.e., approach-avoidance conflict). ICA analyses demonstrated unique roles for salience, frontoparietal, medial prefrontal, and inferior frontal networks in differential encoding of reward vs threat prediction error and value signals. The left frontoparietal network uniquely encoded degree of conflict between reward and threat value at the time of choice. MVPA demonstrated that delivery of reward and threat could accurately be decoded within salience and inferior frontal networks, respectively, and that decisions to approach reward vs avoid threat were predicted by the relative degree to which these reward vs threat representations were active at the time of choice. This latter result suggests that navigating AAC decisions involves generating mental representations for possible decision outcomes, and relative activation of these representations may bias subsequent decision-making towards approaching reward or avoiding threat accordingly.

Project description:Animal approach-avoidance conflict paradigms have been used extensively to operationalize anxiety, quantify the effects of anxiolytic agents, and probe the neural basis of fear and anxiety. Results from human neuroimaging studies support that a frontal-striatal-amygdala neural circuitry is important for approach-avoidance learning. However, the neural basis of decision-making is much less clear in this context. Thus, we combined a recently developed human approach-avoidance paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify neural substrates underlying approach-avoidance conflict decision-making. Fifteen healthy adults completed the approach-avoidance conflict (AAC) paradigm during fMRI. Analyses of variance were used to compare conflict to nonconflict (avoid-threat and approach-reward) conditions and to compare level of reward points offered during the decision phase. Trial-by-trial amplitude modulation analyses were used to delineate brain areas underlying decision-making in the context of approach/avoidance behavior. Conflict trials as compared to the nonconflict trials elicited greater activation within bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, and caudate, as well as right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). Right caudate and lateral PFC activation was modulated by level of reward offered. Individuals who showed greater caudate activation exhibited less approach behavior. On a trial-by-trial basis, greater right lateral PFC activation related to less approach behavior. Taken together, results suggest that the degree of activation within prefrontal-striatal-insula circuitry determines the degree of approach versus avoidance decision-making. Moreover, the degree of caudate and lateral PFC activation related to individual differences in approach-avoidance decision-making. Therefore, the approach-avoidance conflict paradigm is ideally suited to probe anxiety-related processing differences during approach-avoidance decision-making.

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Decision-making during obstetric emergencies: A narrative approach.

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