Physicians' underlying assumption appears to be that new technologies can be introduced without implications for patient experiences of disease – that signs can be reduced to their 'objective' biomedical meanings.
In terms of job characteristics, nurses may receive more official training in infection control than physicians, under the assumption that physicians are already knowledgeable.
21 Another barrier frequently endorsed by physicians is their assumption that patients are not ready to talk about end-of-life care.
Tervalon and Murray-Garcia [ 46] argued for a cultural humility approach which empowered the patient to relate their perspective, rather than have the physician make particular assumptions through learned expertise.
With the above assumptions, the physicians' demand functions can be derived.
In the Partners HealthCare case study, the reminder system was a valuable decision process to assist physicians to question their assumptions and expected outcomes.
First, as Shields and Shields [ 6] note in their paper on working with Generation X physicians, most of the assumptions about generation and gender shifts are supported at best by anecdotal evidence rather than empirical data.
What came up was that these physicians often made the assumption that more information, like getting an amniocentesis and really figuring out what the abnormalities are, is always better.
It replaced a medical ethos founded on trust in physicians' decisions often on the assumption that "doctor knows best"—with an ethos that sought to put patients in charge of their own care.
