Healthcare Decisions Are Always Supported Decisions

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This article refers to:

Supported Decision Making With People at the Margins of Autonomy

This article is referred to by:

Supported Decision Making with People at the Margins of Autonomy: Response to Commentaries

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This commentary was possible due to the amazing support of Paul Hofmann, Jean Halpin, Erin Nieset, Allison Predmore, and Michele Haag. Moreover, I must acknowledge my debt to the Palliative Care Team at Riverside Methodist Hospital. As a team, they demonstrate what it means to provide compassionate patient-centered care and inspire me, every day, to be and do better.

FUNDING

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes

1 Consider that prenatal events, such as trauma or mother’s diet, or a person’s socio-economic status (or their parent’s status) are social but also some of the most accurate predictors of health (Sapolsky 2017).

2 My account is incorrect in that it is one sided, it considers healthcare decision-making as social and diachronic only in terms of patients. A robust account of healthcare decision-making includes patients and providers as both being social and diachronic.