title: How patients make treatment choices.
abstract: The medical field has undergone a quiet revolution during the past three decades. Patients have been brought into the treatment decision process as never before. Gone are the days when the patient was delivered the diagnosis and simply told how their disorder was to be treated. Rather, widespread use of shared decision making has changed the way that patients and their physicians interact. The development of best clinical practices from concepts of evidence-based medicine has shown that, for many disorders, the various treatment options result in near-equivalent outcomes. More recently, the democratization of medical information by the internet has made the patient a much better informed consumer, and thus a more active participant in his or her own care.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hellenthal
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ellison
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D016896:Treatment Outcome