Commentary

(Ed. Note: This is the first in an occasional series about how people can do the work of being a patient, work only they can do.)

By Cheree Cleghorn, Editor

Patient, know thyself.

Some of the biggest life decisions we make are when we’re sick.

The more we know about how decision-making actually works among us humans, who are more complicated than Google actually, the better off we are.

This study about voter attitudes was done in Italy, but the findings may offer a valuable insight into how people decide in other situations. It is about undecided voters and many patients find themselves undecided often.

This was published in Thursday’s issue of Science.

New York Times

“Voters explain their reasons by relying on cultural and idiosyncratic causal theories that may bear little relation to the real reason for their preferences,” Timothy D. Wilson and Yoav Bar-Anan of the University of Virginia wrote in an editorial that accompanies the study.”

The undecideds, the authors concluded, really were not undecided. They weren’t ready to act yet but they were not undecided.(Emphasis added)

How Do You Make Important Decisions…Specifically, Health Care Ones?

You will serve yourself well if you understand how your decision-making style may affect your health care decision-making and have someone close to you offer other ways of thinking about your problem.

If you are quick to decide, you want a deliberate friend to listen to the same information. If you are all about analysis because you are a computer whiz, a lawyer or work in finance, you need someone who is emotionally connected to the situation to remind you that there is more to think about that pure information. Feelings matter, too.

It’s true that many patients can make excellent big decisions very fast.

They can make bad ones, too.

They can harm themselves by ignoring symptoms or delaying a choice because of the fear of making a mistake as well as being afraid about their bodies.

None of us should count on our personal decision-style as being adequate for the job of making a life-changing health care decision.

It is your body and your life. You are the one who ought to make the decision. However, listen to others who can ask questions you may not think of or even want to ask.

A Patient’s Decision…Reversed With One Question

Here’s a simple example which doesn’t require any background on the patient’s problem.

A young, beautiful newly widowed woman desperately wanted “everything” done a plastic surgeon could do. Face lift. Tummy tuck. Liposuction in all possible locations. Nothing any close friend of hers could say could slow her down. Clearly, she was grieving and wanted to erase the toll of five long years of a husband’s grueling treatment.

As she burbled about her grand make-over plan, an acquaintance asked, “How are you going to lie down and be comfortable while you get well? What position is going to be comfortable? You can’t lie on either side. Your back won’t be exactly right. You have to keep your head in one position right after. How is this going to work?”

One practical question did it. The woman’s mouth fell open. “Oh.”

She had not been able to think past walking into the procedure and then after, when she emerged, a new woman, literally. She had not thought about what came in between. The recovery part.

One practical question helped her see what she had not, what friends had been worried about, but in a different way.

She cancelled everything but the face lift, deciding she would take her improvement program one step at a time.

In the end, we do best by working with someone whose decision style is the opposite of ours.

That woman never intended to “work with” that acquaintance. It was pure luck that she encountered her.

Luck, as they say, favors the prepared mind.

Prepare yours by going to school on what you can understand about your decision-making.

If you say, “But I don’t have a style,” you do. Everybody close to you probably knows.

Ask them.

Patient, please do get to know thyself.

Source: New York Times, August 21, 2008

Citation Source: Science, August 21, 2008