Percentage of agreement with statements concerning the locus of decision making
| Statement | Agreement with statement (%) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oncology (n = 30) | Nursing home (n = 29) | Cardiology (n = 21) | Physicians total (n = 80) | Policy makers (n = 29) | |
| *Significant difference with Mann-Whitney test (p⩽0.05) between oncologists and cardiologists. | |||||
| A good doctor’s prime concern is for the interests of patients, who are committed to his or her care, even if this leads to a less efficient allocation of the scarce resources (p = 0.05)* | 83 | 93 | 100 | 91 | 83 |
| Not the doctor but the government should make choices concerning the allocation of scarce resources on other than medical grounds | 67 | 62 | 76 | 68 | 76 |
| Physicians also have to consider the justifiability of their decisions when these influence the allocation of scarce medical resources | 90 | 93 | 86 | 90 | 93 |
| Clear government policy concerning health care for the elderly can provide guidance when justifying medical decisions in individual cases | 63 | 45 | 62 | 56 | 66 |
| Restrictions enforced by the government disturb good medical decision making for individual patients | 37 | 41 | 60 | 44 | 52 |