Recently, a study was published in the medical journal the Archives of Internal Medicine and it aimed at finding out the differences in the ways physicians treat patients and the treatments they would select for themselves.

After conducting a detailed survey of 940 primary care physicians, researchers found that doctors were more likely to choose treatments with higher risk of death for themselves as compared to the treatments chosen for the patients.

To reach to this conclusion, the researchers presented all those physicians with two hypothetical scenarios involving colon cancer and avian flu.

One of the options involved an operation that completely cures 80% of patients with no complications, fails to cure 16% of patients and in remaining 4% cases the cure leads to complications such as a colostomy or chronic diarrhea. The other option involved a surgery which would cure 80% of patients without any complications, but fails to cure 20% of patients.

It brought a huge surprise when 38% of physicians picked the treatment with the higher death rate for themselves whereas only 25% of the physicians recommended the same treatment for the patient in case of colon cancer.

Physician Peter Ubel said, “While doctors may not always select the higher-risk treatments for themselves off the bat that different psychological biases come in to play when considering their own treatments”.