Physicians caring for older adults with multimorbidity must often balance treatment burden while managing multiple chronic conditions. However, the factors influencing how physicians prioritize this burden in outpatient care remain poorly understood. To address this gap, researchers in Japan conducted a study examining physicians’ attitudes toward considering treatment burden when managing older patients with multimorbidity.
The study analyzed responses from 688 outpatient physicians and used a novel six-item Treatment Burden Prioritization Scale to evaluate how strongly physicians incorporate this consideration into their clinical decision-making. The findings showed that female physicians were more likely to prioritize treatment burden compared with male physicians, whereas years of clinical experience and practice setting were not significantly associated with prioritization.…
