Medical Decision Making and Chinese Patients' Self-Construals

Abstract

This study tested the effects of patients' cultural orientations on preferences for medical decision making among patients from Hong Kong and Beijing. Specifically, this study aimed to assess whether self-construals, as individual-level correlates of individualism and collectivism, had an impact on how Chinese patients prefer to make decisions about their medical care. A family decision option was added to the revised form of the Autonomy Preference Index (Ende, Kazis, Ash, & Moskowitz, 1989; Smith, Garko, Bennett, Irwin, & Schofield, 1994). This was administered along with a set of items to assess the self-construal of participants. Consistent with previous findings, Chinese from both Hong Kong and Beijing preferred joint decision making to either patient or doctor decision making. Participants' levels of interdependent self-construal positively predicted preferences for decisions made by the physician, joint decision making, and decisions made by family, but not decisions made by patients. On the other hand, the level of independent self-construal positively predicted preference for patient decision making and joint decision making, but not decisions made by the family and the doctor.