In the traditional 'fix-it' model of medical decision making, the identified problem is typically characterized by a diagnosis that indicates a deviation from normalcy. When a medical problem is multifaceted and the available ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of age on hospital resource use for seriously ill adults, and to explore whether age-related differences in resource use are explained by patients' severity of illness and preferences for ...

BACKGROUND: Serious illness often causes economic hardship for patients' families. However, it is not known whether this hardship is associated with a preference for the goal of care to focus on maximizing comfort instead ...

BACKGROUND: Medical treatment decisions should be based on the preferences of informed patients or their proxies and on the expected outcomes of treatment. Because seriously ill patients are at risk for cardiac arrest, examination ...

The process of designing research protocols for testing treatment effects and reporting the results of such research demands both explicit and implicit value judgments. When measuring the effects of alternative treatments, ...

CONTEXT: Previous studies have documented that cancer patients tend to overestimate the probability of long-term survival. If patient preferences about the trade-offs between the risks and benefits associated with alternative ...