ArticleJournal of medical ethics2009
Autonomy, religion and clinical decisions: findings from a national physician survey.
Article in Journal of medical ethics, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 66 citations in OpenAlex.
- Directive counsel and morally controversial medical decision-making: findings from two national surveys of primary care physicians.Journal of general internal medicine · 2014Trial
- Conceptions of Medical Assistance in Dying and Euthanasia: A Literature Review on the Role of Religious Affiliation and Religiosity.Journal of religion and health · 2026Article
- When Biobanks Meet Religion: Association Between Religiosity and Attitudes of Polish Medical Students Toward Biobanking of Human Biological Material for Research Purposes.Journal of religion and health · 2024Article
- Conscientious objection - a cross-sectional, vignette-based, mixed methods exploration of Australian pharmacists' perspectives.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2024Article
- Religious Identity Discrimination in the Physician Workforce: Insights from Two National Studies of Muslim Clinicians in the US.Journal of general internal medicine · 2023Article
- The NERSH Questionnaire and Pool of Data from 12 Countries: Development and Description.Journal of religion and health · 2022Article
- Factors Influencing Physicians' Clinical Decision-making at Upazila Health Complexes in Bangladesh.Global journal on quality and safety in healthcare · 2020Article
- Second-trimester abortion attitudes and practices among maternal-fetal medicine and family planning subspecialists.BMC women's health · 2020Article
- Article
- Australian pharmacists' perspectives on physician-assisted suicide (PAS): thematic analysis of semistructured interviews.BMJ open · 2019Article
- Religion and Spirituality as a Cultural Asset in Medical Students.Journal of religion and health · 2018Article
- Does a Therapist's World View Matter?Journal of religion and health · 2016Article
- Incorporating Spirituality into Health Sciences Education.Journal of religion and health · 2016Article
- Clinical and ethical judgment: a profound dilemma.Neurology · 2014Article
- The collaborative autonomy model of medical decision-making.Neurocritical care · 2014Review
- Religion and anxiety treatments in primary care patients.Anxiety, stress, and coping · 2013Article
- Dignity in end-of-life care: results of a national survey of U.S. physicians.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2012Article
- Are religion and religiosity important to end-of-life decisions and patient autonomy in the ICU? The Ethicatt study.Intensive care medicine · 2012Article
- Predictors of hospitalised patients' preferences for physician-directed medical decision-making.Journal of medical ethics · 2012Article
- Obstetrician-gynecologists' beliefs about safe-sex and abstinence counseling.International journal of gynaecology and obstetrics: the official organ of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPatient autonomy has been promoted as the most important principle to guide difficult clinical decisions. To examine whether practising physicians indeed value patient autonomy above other considerations, physicians were asked to weight patient autonomy against three other criteria that often influence doctors' decisions. Associations between physicians' religious characteristics and their weighting of the criteria were also examined.
methodsMailed survey in 2007 of a stratified random sample of 1000 US primary care physicians, selected from the American Medical Association masterfile. Physicians were asked how much weight should be given to the following: (1) the patient's expressed wishes and values, (2) the physician's own judgment about what is in the patient's best interest, (3) standards and recommendations from professional medical bodies and (4) moral guidelines from religious traditions.
resultsResponse rate 51% (446/879). Half of physicians (55%) gave the patient's expressed wishes and values "the highest possible weight". In comparative analysis, 40% gave patient wishes more weight than the other three factors, and 13% ranked patient wishes behind some other factor. Religious doctors tended to give less weight to the patient's expressed wishes. For example, 47% of doctors with high intrinsic religious motivation gave patient wishes the "highest possible weight", versus 67% of those with low (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8).
conclusionsDoctors believe patient wishes and values are important, but other considerations are often equally or more important. This suggests that patient autonomy does not guide physicians' decisions as much as is often recommended in the ethics literature.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.