Processes of patient decision making: Theoretical and methodological issues

There is a paucity of research studying patients' decision making processes . Traditional normative approaches investigating human decision have presen ted rational, analytic processing as a 'gold standard' for decision making with decision aids developed to facilitate such thinking. This paradigm has been challenged by the recent emergence of naturalistic decision making. N aturalistic approaches argue for techniques modelled closer to how decision s are actually made in 'real life'. Early work in this evolving field sugge sts the importance of more automatic, intuitive processing such as the use of heuristic short-cuts. This paper discusses the contribution of naturalis tic decision theory and assesses its usefulness as an alternative to classi cal decision approaches in investigating patient decision making. Approache s for measuring underlying cognitive processes are also critically discusse d.