This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Steven Z. Pantilat, MD
University of California, San Francisco

JAMA. 1996;275(2):107.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—Dr Blackhall and colleagues¹ demonstrate that patients from different ethnic groups have differing attitudes toward autonomy and medical decision making. I agree with the authors' suggestion "that physicians ask patients if they wish to be informed about their illness and be involved in making decisions about their care or if they prefer that their family handles such matters" and believe it is also important to address the timing of such discussions.

One option is to address this issue only when the need arises, for instance, when a test result reveals the presence of a serious illness. The advantage of this approach is that it limits the number of patients with whom the physician must discuss the issue to those few with an abnormal test result. However, a major problem with this approach is that when the physician has a test result indicating the patient has a . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Margaret A. Winker, MD, Senior Editor, and Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, Senior Editor.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?