Introduction
to Symposium on The Role of Psychological
Theories in the Effort to Improve Medical Decision Making
American Psychological Annual Meetings
San Francisco, August 26, 2001.
The goal of the session is to illustrate the role of psychological
theories in medical decision making. We aim to highlight significant
contributions. That is, we won't just describe studies that use words from
medicine to provide content to a cognitive task (as, for example, the Asian Flu
problem that illustrates framing, or studies in which college students do
category learning tasks with disease and symptom names). Nor will we describe
studies that simply help physicians do what they already do, better (although
that is a worthwhile project). Rather, our presentations address the meaningful
integration of psychology and medical decision making, in the sense that the
psychologist has to fully grasp the medical problem, while developing or
applying psychological theory appropriate to the physician's or patient's task
when thinking about that problem.
Our presentations cover a range of topics, including
diagnoses and decisions, thinking by both physicians and patients, information
presentation and judgment elicitation, both educational and clinical contexts, and
a variety of psychological theories.
Robert M. Hamm, PhD
Director, Clinical Decision Making Program
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
900 NE 10th St., Oklahoma City OK 73104
email: robert-hamm@ouhsc.edu