INTRODUCTION
cancer
CANCER
During hospitalization, decision-making regarding patient management and further steps regularly occurs during ward rounds.However, there may be differences among patients regarding their preferences in active involvement. In fact, some patients may differ regarding their preferred role in medical decision-making, a construct which is described as decisional control preference (DCP).Degner distinguished between patients that indicate that they prefer to leave decisions up to the healthcare specialist (passive DCP), patients that prefer to choose between treatment options independently (active DCP), and patients that wish to make a shared decision with their healthcare specialists (collaborative DCP).Until today, most of the studies on DCP have focused on well-defined and homogenous patient populations such as patients with cancer or end-of life settings. Research in general medical populations is scarce. Previous literature suggest that physicians may provide passive patients with fewer medical information.Therefore, we investigated the association between patients’ DCP, their medical knowledge, and different aspects of perceived quality of care among patients hospitalized on general medical wards. Patients had been recruited in a prior multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT), the BEDSIDE-OUTSIDE Trial.