"I'm not the doctor; I'm just the patient": Patient agency and shared decision-making in naturally occurring primary care consultations.



Lian, Olaug S ORCID: 0000-0002-5752-1486, Nettleton, Sarah, Grange, Huw ORCID: 0000-0002-3791-1321 and Dowrick, Christopher
(2022) "I'm not the doctor; I'm just the patient": Patient agency and shared decision-making in naturally occurring primary care consultations. Patient education and counseling, 105 (7). pp. 1996-2004.

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Abstract

<h4>Objectives</h4>To explore interactional processes in which clinical decisions are made in situ during medical consultations, particularly the ways in which patients show agency in decision-making processes by proposing and opposing actions, and which normative dimensions and role-expectations their engagement entail.<h4>Methods</h4>Narrative analysis of verbatim transcripts of 22 naturally occurring consultations, sourced from a corpus of 212 consultations between general practitioners and patients in England. After thematically coding the whole dataset, we selected 22 consultations with particularly engaged patients for in-depth analysis.<h4>Results</h4>Patients oppose further actions more often than they propose actions, and they oppose more directly than they propose. When they explain why they propose and oppose something, they reveal their values. Patients' role-performance changes throughout the consultations.<h4>Conclusion</h4>Assertive patients claim - and probably also achieve - most influence when they oppose actions directly and elaborate why. Patients display ambiguous role-expectations. In final concluding stages of decision-making processes, patients usually defer to GPs' authority.<h4>Practice implications</h4>Clinicians should be attentive to the ways in which patients want to engage in decision-making throughout the whole consultation, with awareness of normative dimensions of both process and content, and the ways in which patient's actions are constrained by their institutional position.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Humans, Physician-Patient Relations, Decision Making, Patient Participation, Referral and Consultation, Primary Health Care, Decision Making, Shared
Divisions: Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 09 Jun 2022 11:30
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 21:00
DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2021.10.031
Open Access URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2021.10.031
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3156124