Maximizing therapeutic success: The key concepts of individualized medical strategy (IMS).

Individualised medical strategy (IMS) seeks therapeutic success in the following three dimensions: (1) biology, (2) sociology, and (3) psychology. IMS addresses these dimensions of success (1) as efficiency by achieving biological goals such as medication that normalizes blood pressure or surgery that completely eradicates cancer; (2) as effectiveness by achieving social goals such as satisfying guidelines, patients' purposes, and ethical demands; and (3) as motivation by achieving psychological goals such emotional support and identification of patients with therapy. IMS designs patients as principals of care, with utility-driven action style, physicians as agents of medical rationality with duty-driven action style, and strategy as primer for cooperation between patients and physicians. Dialog is central to maximize success through (1) informing patients about their pathologic conditions, options, and risks of treatment, (2) negotiating patients' needs, and (3) motivating patients to support therapy. IMS understands therapy as open-ended process where one-sided views of what is to be considered as "best medicine" is not appropriate, and where physicians integrate normative and emotional dimensions of patients into therapy. In conclusion, we suggest IMS as a highly useful concept of medical action, where physicians integrate patients' individual utilities, ethical principles, and emotions to maximize therapeutic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]