“Medical decision science is a field that encompasses several related pursuits. As a normative endeavor, it proposes standards for ideal decision making. As a descriptive endeavor, it seeks to explain how physicians and patients routinely make decisions, and has identified both barriers to, and facilitators of, effective decision making. As a prescriptive endeavor, it seeks to develop tools that can guide physicians, their patients, and health care policymakers to make good decisions in practice.”
– Schwartz and Bergus, 2008 (Medical Decision Making: A Physician’s Guide, Cambridge University Press)