Factors influencing health practitioners’ cognitive processing and decision-making style

Abstract

Successful interventions, healthcare planning, and patient-centered care require explanation, justification, and collaboration through interprofessional clinical decision-making (CDM). Understanding health practitioners’ decision-making styles and influencing factors can enhance CDM capabilities. Health professionals and students (N = 229) completed an online survey on their decision-making styles, interprofessional education, interprofessional practice, discipline education, clinical experience, processing styles, personality, interpersonal motivational factors, and age. To assess the influence of task structure, participants answered CDM questions on a high- and a low-structured case study. Age demonstrated an effect on the level of clinical experience, while clinical experience also mediated the effect of age on rational processing styles. While personality results were mixed, consistent with previous findings, conscientiousness predicted rational processing style. Effects of interpersonal motivation on personality were also mixed, insofar as results indicated an association between conscientiousness and both experiential and rational processing styles. Interpersonal motivation also predicted rational processing styles. The complexity of CDM and factors influencing healthcare practitioners’ processing and decision-making styles was highlighted. To optimize CDM processes by addressing errors and biases, CDM, and practice complexity, healthcare practitioner education should include theory-driven CDM orientation frameworks.