Development of Attitudes about Sharing Decision-Making: A Comparison of Medical and Surgical Residents

Abstract

To investigate the evolution of attitudes about the sharing of decision-making, residents in medicine and surgery at a university hospital completed a questionnaire that was originally developed to assess attitudes of businessmen. The questionnaire was distributed to residents in their first year of training and again at the end of their third year. In the first year of training, medical and surgical residents had similar attitudes, and medical residents' attitudes did not change during the three years. However, surgical residents in their third year scored significantly lower in each test category than in their first year and than medical residents in the third year-thus showing a change toward more authoritarian attitudes. We conclude that different training programs influence residents' attitudes toward shared decision-making differently and that the surgeons' change to more authoritarian attitudes may reflect the task-oriented, hierarchical nature of their program.