JLE

Cahiers d'études et de recherches francophones / Santé

MENU

Les chemins de la décision Volume 1, numéro 3, Août-Septembre 1991

Auteur
Département de Santé publique, faculté de médecine. Université Paris XII-Val-de-Marne, 94010 Créteil, France.
  • Page(s) : 235-40
  • Année de parution : 1991

The physician is faced with decisions that can be complicated: in many instances, the situation is ambiguous, and clinical decision must be made in conditions of uncertainty, due to errors and variations in interpretation of data or more often a lack of consistency in the knowledge of the disease and its natural course. Decision analysis is a tool designed to deal with choice in conditions of uncertainty. Its graphic support is the «decision tree», where the decision-maker can enter the logical structure of the decision problem. Decision analysis is intended to help physicians decide what they should do under a given set of circumstances, so that their decisions will be consistent with their own implicit assessment of the problem and the value outcomes attached to it. In this sense, it can be regarded as a simulation of the intuitive thought process, and a means of verifying its consistency, notably when the circumstances are variable.