Abstract:
Doctor-patient shared decision-making (SDM) is widely advocated as an ideal for making medical decisions because it is believed to afford a series of good results. However, previous researchers have summarized the influencing factors of SDM from a variety of perspectives, but they have not systematically focused on the psychological mechanism of how these factors operate. This paper proposes four types of SDM implicit prototypes based on implicit prototype theory, including doctors’ and patients’ implicit prototype for themselves, and doctors’ and patients’ implicit prototype for each other, interprets the SDM implicit prototype psychological paths in which the individual characteristics of doctors and patients influence SDM (the individual characteristics of doctors and patients→their potential psychological states→their SDM implicit prototype→their shared decision making), and reviews the individual characteristics of doctors and patients that influence SDM depending on four implicit prototype pathways. Finally, according to the SDM implicit prototype research framework, several potential topics, including but not limited to exploring the individual characteristics of doctors and patients that influence SDM, investigating potential psychological states of doctors and patients influenced by their individual characteristics, testing the role of doctors’ and patients’ SDM implicit prototype, and focusing on the moderators of the effect of the individual characteristics of doctors and patients, for future research are discussed.