WHO DECIDES FOR THE PATIENT?A REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON MEDICAL DECISION-MAKING IN PAKISTAN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62533/tp50h630Keywords:
Medical Decision Making, Autonomy, Paternalism, Family, CollectivismAbstract
Over the past two decades, a growing body of literature has examined medical decision-making in Pakistan across diverse clinical contexts, but the evidence remains fragmented because many studies are small in scale, disease-specific, or focused on a single stakeholder group. This review synthesizes published literature to identify prevailing attitudes, preferences, and practices concerning decision-making relating to the roles of patients, families, and physicians in medical decision-making. The analysis follows a stakeholder-centric framework comprising three interconnected lenses: patient/public perspectives, healthcare provider perspectives, and conceptual frameworks. The findings suggest that medical decision-making in Pakistan is shaped by socio-cultural and structural context in which care occurs. Rather than fitting neat binaries of individual autonomy versus collectivism, or a simple account of paternalism, decision-making appears to operate through a relational structure in which patients often want substantial information and recognition, families remain central to care and deliberation without necessarily being desired to lead, and physicians are trusted to provide both expertise and direction. The central task, therefore, is to make this relational process more ethically robust by further exploring patient and public perceptions and aligning decision-making practices with the cultural and socioeconomic realities of the Pakistani context.
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Data Availability Statement
Used data that is already available in the public domain.
