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The effect of decision fatigue on surgeons' clinical decision making

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  • Emil Persson
  • Kinga Barrafrem
  • Andreas Meunier
  • Gustav Tinghög

Abstract

The depleting effect of repeated decision making is often referred to as decision fatigue. Understanding how decision fatigue affects medical decision making is important for achieving both efficiency and fairness in health care. In this study, we investigate the potential role of decision fatigue in orthopedic surgeons' decisions to operate, exploiting a natural experiment whereby patient allocation to time slots is plausibly randomized at the level of the patient. Our results show that patients who met a surgeon toward the end of his or her work shift were 33 percentage points less likely to be scheduled for an operation compared with those who were seen first. In a logistic regression with doctor‐fixed effects and standard errors clustered at the level of the doctor, the odds of operation were estimated to decrease by 10.5% (odds ratio = 0.895, p

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  • Emil Persson & Kinga Barrafrem & Andreas Meunier & Gustav Tinghög, 2019. "The effect of decision fatigue on surgeons' clinical decision making," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(10), pages 1194-1203, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:28:y:2019:i:10:p:1194-1203
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.3933
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    1. Rachet-Jacquet, Laurie, 2022. "Do breaks from surgery improve the performance of orthopaedic surgeons?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    2. Mohd Fadhli Mohd Fauzi & Hanizah Mohd Yusoff & Nur Adibah Mat Saruan & Rosnawati Muhamad Robat, 2020. "Development and validation of Work-Related Activities during Non-Work Time Scale (WANTS) for doctors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-18, November.
    3. Ferro, Simone & Serra, Chiara, 2025. "Triage at shift changes and distortions in the perception and treatment of emergency patients," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    4. Shen, Menghan & He, Wen & Li, Linyan, 2020. "Incentives to use primary care and their impact on healthcare utilization: Evidence using a public health insurance dataset in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).

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