Obesity Surgery Complications
If you've ever had to make a tough medical decision (like whether to have a complicated surgery, for instance), you know that it can be almost impossible to make up your mind with certainty. And you know what it's like to wonder, over and over, whether you're making the right choice.
I've seen a lot of patients let their fears of a medical procedure scare them into taking a passive approach, doing nothing at all.
But there's a better way to go about making tough decisions like this: Imagine you're making the decision for someone else.
In a recent study, researchers asked 2,399 people to imagine themselves as a patient, as a physician treating a patient, a medical director creating patient guidelines, or a parent making a decision for a child.
Then they asked the participants to imagine two different scenarios. In one, they were asked what they would do if they were told about a deadly flu going around that would kill 10 percent of the people who don't get vaccinated, even though the vaccine itself carries a 5 percent death risk. In the second scenario, participants were asked to decide on whether they would undergo chemotherapy on a slow-growing cancer.
The participants who were asked to make the decision as a professional were more likely to take an active approach (i.e., get the vaccine, get the chemo).
Of course, no one else can make these kinds of decision for you. But looking at them a bit more objectively might help you wade through some of the doubt and allow you to choose the path you believe is most likely to give you the outcome you want.
