Decision Making in Health and Medicine with CD-ROM: Integrating Evidence and Values

by M. G. Myriam Hunink , Paul P. Glasziou , Joanna E. Siegel , Jane C. Weeks , Joseph S. Pliskin , Arthur S. Elstein , Milton C. Weinstein

• ISBN13: 9780521770293
• ISBN10: 0521770297
• Edition: CD
• Format: Paperback w/CD
• Copyright: 2001-11-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Decision making in health care involves navigating through a complex and tangled web of diagnostic and therapeutic uncertainties, patient preferences and values, and costs. Medical therapies have side effects, surgery may lead to undesirable complications, and diagnostic technologies may produce inconclusive results. In many clinical and health policy decisions it is necessary to counterbalance benefits and risks, and to trade off competing objectives such as maximizing life expectancy vs optimizing quality of life vs minimizing the resources required. This textbook plots a clear course through these complex and conflicting variables. It clearly explains and illustrates tools for integrating quantitative evidence-based data and subjective outcome values in making clinical and health policy decisions. The book will be of immense practical value for all those charged with the responsibility of decision making in medicine, including practitioners and trainees, and for students studying clinical decision analysis, EB-medicine, and clinical epidemiology.

Table of Contents

About the authors	vii
Foreword	ix
Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
List of abbreviations	xv
Elements of decision making in health care	1	(32)
Managing uncertainty	33	(28)
Choosing the best treatment	61	(27)
Valuing outcomes	88	(40)
Interpreting diagnostic information	128	(29)
Deciding when to test	157	(20)
Multiple test results	177	(37)
Finding and summarizing the evidence	214	(31)
Constrained resources	245	(60)
Recurring events	305	(34)
Variability and uncertainty	339	(25)
Proactive decision making: a way of life	364	(17)
Index	381