Decision-Making in Surgery and Cancer Care

"The decision-making process represents a more complex cognitive exercise than the actual delivery of a health care intervention." – Srinivasaiah. This book explores the complex cognitive process and psychology of decision making in surgery and cancer care. Decision-making is a vital part of surgical practice and yet there is a paucity of readily available high quality surgical sciences research. This book presents the methodological details and summarises this area on a global platform. Decision-making is multi-factorial: clinical research evidence, health outcome measures (quality of life, health-related quality of life), clinician factors (knowledge, skill, expertise, judgment), patient factors (socio-economic, education, cultural), nursing factors, translational research, and resource infrastructure, all play a role. Modern health care is moving towards a patient centred care approach and evidence based patient choice and decision making clearly has a greater role to play. Decision-making is at the heart of this process and this book provides a comprehensive introduction and global overview of this essential area of clinical practice.