Dataset Information

Experimental evidence of physician social preferences

ABSTRACT: Significance Physicians routinely face trade-offs among their own interests, the interests of their patients, and society’s interest in preserving medical resources. To manage these trade-offs, society relies on both traditional professional ethics and bureaucratic monitoring and control. Our results—that physicians are twice as likely to be altruistic as all other samples but indistinguishable from the general population in terms of equality–efficiency orientation—suggest that professional norms can meaningfully contribute to physicians putting patients first and highlight the importance of nurturing these norms of physician professionalism. However, our findings also suggest that policymakers may not rely on physician professionalism to ensure an efficient allocation of medical resources. Physicians’ professional ethics require that they put patients’ interests ahead of their own and that they should allocate limited medical resources efficiently. Understanding physicians’ extent of adherence to these principles requires understanding the social preferences that lie behind them. These social preferences may be divided into two qualitatively different trade-offs: the trade-off between self and other (altruism) and the trade-off between reducing differences in payoffs (equality) and increasing total payoffs (efficiency). We experimentally measure social preferences among a nationwide sample of practicing physicians in the United States. Our design allows us to distinguish empirically between altruism and equality–efficiency orientation and to accurately measure both trade-offs at the level of the individual subject. We further compare the experimentally measured social preferences of physicians with those of a representative sample of Americans, an “elite” subsample of Americans, and a nationwide sample of medical students. We find that physicians’ altruism stands out. Although most physicians place a greater weight on self than on other, the share of physicians who place a greater weight on other than on self is twice as large as for all other samples—32% as compared with 15 to 17%. Subjects in the general population are the closest to physicians in terms of altruism. The higher altruism among physicians compared with the other samples cannot be explained by income or age differences. By contrast, physicians’ preferences regarding equality–efficiency orientation are not meaningfully different from those of the general sample and elite subsample and are less efficiency oriented than medical students.

SUBMITTER: Li J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9282368 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundPeople with autism have abnormal preferences, ranging from an apparent lack of preference for social stimuli to unusually strong preferences for restricted sets of highly idiosyncratic stimuli. Yet the profile of preferences across social and nonsocial domains has not been mapped out in detail, and the processes responsible remain poorly understood.MethodsTo assess preferences across a range of stimuli, we measured real monetary donations to 50 charities spanning categories pertaining to people, mental health, animals, or the environment. We compared the donations made by 16 high-functioning adults with autism to those made by neurotypical controls matched on age, gender and education. We additionally collected ratings of how people evaluated the different charities.ResultsCompared with controls, high-functioning adults with autism donated less overall and also showed a significantly disproportionate reduction in donations to people charities compared with donations to the other charities. Furthermore, whereas controls discriminated strongly between different people charities, choosing to donate a lot of money to some and very little to others, much less discrimination was seen in the autism group. Ratings that probed how participants constructed their preferences did not differ between groups, except for a difference in the perceived impact of pictures and text information about people charities. Strikingly, there were some charities related to mental health, and autism in particular, to which the autism group donated considerably more than did the controls.ConclusionsPeople with autism were found to have reduced preference and sensitivity towards charities benefiting other people. The findings provide evidence for a domain-specific impairment in social cognition in autism spectrum disorder, and in particular in linking otherwise intact social knowledge to the construction of value signals on which preferences regarding other people are based.

Project description:BackgroundEffective communication is vital for optimal medical consultation, but there is little current information about physician preferences for effective consultation.MethodsWe invited physicians with at least one post-graduate year of experience at four Minnesota teaching hospitals to complete a 16-question Internet questionnaire about inpatient consultations.ResultsE-mail requests were received by an estimated 651 physicians. Questionnaires were completed by 323 (50%). Of these, 54% had completed training >5 years before, 17% had completed training <5 years before, and 30% were residents or fellows. Three elements were considered essential in consultation requests by most respondents: the specific question to be addressed (94%), whom to call with the response (68%), and consultation urgency (66%). In the consultation note, 71% of subjects placed high importance on simple, concise recommendations and 64% on the rationale behind them, while only 7% placed high importance on citing references. Most (69%) preferred that assessments and recommendations be written in bulleted or numbered format. A plurality (48%) preferred that assessments and recommendations be separated. Most placed high value on recommendations regarding drug therapy that specify dose (80%), duration (80%), and generic medication name (62%). Requesters placed greater importance than consultants (87% vs. 65%, respectively, P = 0.004) on recommendations that included duration of therapy. The majority (63%) stated that telephone requests were needed for emergent or urgent consultations. Those who usually requested consultations were more likely than those who usually responded to consultation requests to prefer telephone requests for routine consultations (43% vs. 20%, P < 0.001).ConclusionsPhysicians agreed on many essential elements for effective consultations. These results should guide efforts to improve communication in the consultation process and design electronic medical record systems.

Dataset Information

Experimental evidence of physician social preferences

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets