Background and aim: This study investigated whether providers respected patient's autonomy, investigating providers' pattern of decisions and their associated characteristics.
Methods: Cross-sectional study, conducted through anonymous questionnaire with hypothetical clinical cases, presented to providers at one oncology center. Decision-making patterns were pre-stablished accordingly to the response´s pattern.
Findings: Of 151 responses, decisions patterns were paternalistic in 38%, shared in 38%, obstinate in 10.6% and consumerist in 13.2%. The consumerist providers reported never having participated in an EOL class in 35% and 30% had never trained in palliative care. Among providers with paternalistic pattern, 35.1% had never attended ethic lectures. In the obstinate group, 31.2% had no training in palliative care. When asked how subjects saw themselves about their pattern of decision, 100% of obstinate, 95% of consumerist and 89% of paternalistic patterns exhibited cognitive dissonance.
Conclusion: Significative differences between decisions and how the providers judge themselves were observed.
Copyright: © 2024 de Camargo, Forte. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.