Medical Care as Flea Market Bargaining? An International Interdisciplinary Study of Varieties of Shared Decision Making in Physician-Patient Interactions.

Phenomenon: Shared decision making (SDM) is a core ideal in the interaction between healthcare providers and patients, but the implementation of the SDM ideal in clinical routines has been a relatively slow process. Approach: In a sociological study, 71 interactions between physicians and simulated patients enacting chronic heart failure were video-recorded in China, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey as part of a quasi-experimental research design. Participating physicians varied in specialty and level of experience. The secondary analysis presented in this article used content analysis to study core components of SDM in all of the 71 interactions and a grounded theory approach to observe how physicians responded actively to patients even though they did not actively employ the SDM ideal. Findings: Full realization of the SDM ideal remains an exception, but various aspects of SDM in physician-patient interaction were observed in all four locations. Analyses of longer interactions show dynamic processes of interaction that sometimes surprised both patient and physician. We observed varieties of SDM that differ from the SDM ideal but arguably achieve what the SDM ideal is intended to achieve. Our analysis suggests a need to revisit the SDM ideal-to consider whether varieties of SDM may be acceptable, even valuable, in their own right. Insights: The gap between the SDM ideal and SDM as implemented in clinical practice may in part be explained by the tendency of medicine to define and teach SDM through a narrow lens of checklist evaluations. The authors support the argument that SDM defies a checklist approach. SDM is not uniform, but nuanced, dependent on circumstances and setting. As SDM is co-produced by patients and physicians in a dynamic process of interaction, medical researchers should consider and medical learners should be exposed to varieties of SDM-related practice rather than a single idealized model. Observing and discussing worked examples contributes to the physician's development of realistic expectations and personal professional growth.

Hearts in their hands-Physicians' gestures embodying shared professional knowledge around the world.

The biomedical approach to medical knowledge is widely accepted around the world. This article considers whether the incorporated aspects of physician-patient interaction have become similarly common across the globe by comparing the gestures that physicians use in their interactions with patients. Up to this point, there has been little research on physicians' use of gestures in health-care settings. We explore how-in four university hospitals in Turkey, the People's Republic of China, The Netherlands and Germany-physicians use gesture in their discussions with simulated patients about the condition of heart failure. Our analysis confirms the importance of gestures for organising both the personal interaction and the knowledge transfer between physician and patient. From the perspective of global comparison, it is notable that physicians in all four hospitals used similar gestures. This demonstrates the globality of biomedical knowledge in an embodied mode. Physicians used gestures for a range of purposes, including to convey the idea of an 'anatomical map' and for constructing visual models of (patho-)physiological processes. Since biomedical language is rife with metaphor, it was not surprising that we also identified an accompanying metaphorical gesture which has a similar form in the various locations that were part of the study.

The Globalisation of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Diseases in the World-Society-A Case Study with a Special Focus on Heart Failure.

While there has been a shift of attention in global health towards non-communicable diseases, we still know little about the social mechanisms that have allowed these diseases to emerge as topics of global concern. We employ a sociological approach to globalisation in order to reconstruct how cardiology, with our special focus being on heart failure research, has become global, and thereby placed cardiovascular diseases on the agenda of global health. Following sociological theories of world-society and world-polity, we identify a number of preconditions that had to be met so that the globalisation of cardiology could set in. Amongst them were technological innovations, the emergence of an organisational infrastructure on the national level, the appearance of cardiological journals, and an internationally standardised nomenclature. More recently, new drugs and treatment strategies, new specialist journals, and new international standards allowed the subspeciality of heart failure to globalise. Our findings are based on the history and sociology of cardiology, and on our analysis of a broad range of other documents, including scientific articles, guidelines, and policy documents. Additionally, our analysis included two datasets, one containing information on national cardiac societies, and the other containing data on publication output in cardiology.

The Emulation and Adaptation of a Global Model of Clinical Practice Guidelines on Chronic Heart Failure in BRICS Countries: A Comparative Study.

Whilst knowledge about diseases is universal, access to health care is not equally distributed. During the last decade, the countries of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have become important actors on the global health scene, pushing for universal, affordable, and more equal access to health care. Although non-communicable diseases place a significant burden on all populations and health systems, low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), such as BRICS, have been affected particularly hard. Approximately 80 percent of worldwide deaths from non-communicable diseases occur in LMIC. We examined if guidelines concerning chronic heart failure from BRICS countries are influenced by global scripts and if these guidelines have converged or diverged in an inter-state context. Our analysis shows that guidelines on heart failure published in BRICS predominantly rely on models initially formulated by European or American cardiological organisations. Guidelines from BRICS deviate from these models to some extent, in particular with regard to specific epidemiological conditions. Except for the Indian guideline, they do not, however, extensively engage with BRICS-specific aspects of costs, access to and affordability of health care services. We interpret these results through the lens of sociological theories on globalisation. Consistent with neoinstitutionalism, recommendations for clinical practice guidelines have spread in BRICS countries in a rather isomorphic fashion. Notwithstanding, some local medical traditions have also been included into these guidelines through localised adaptation and variation.