Parental Decision Regret After Pediatric Urologic Surgeries Compared to Decisions of Everyday Life - Beyond the Abstract

We wished to evaluate the levels of decisional regret reported by parents after their children underwent several different urologic surgeries. It turned out that parental decisional regret after surgery was very low and no parent would have made a different choice (that is, no one would not have chosen surgery).

We also put parents' responses in the context of regret experienced after everyday decisions not related to surgery, such as the car or meal they purchased, or romantic relationship they had. Our findings showed that decisional regret experienced by parents after these everyday decisions was greater than after their child's surgery. In other words, negative feelings about decisions seem to be experienced after every decision that we look at. The magnitude of these feelings is different for different decisions. But simply experiencing these emotions does not necessarily mean wishing to have made a different decision. The levels of decisional regret among parents who wished they had made a different choice for everyday decisions were higher than parents who would still make the same choice. Finally, we provided potential interpretations and cutoffs of decisional regret scores as they relate to the possibility of wishing to have made a different choice.

Written by: Konrad M Szymanski, MD, MPH, Division of Pediatric Urology, Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health, Indianapolis, IN

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