Learning how to decide in Intensive Care Units

This paper describes the process by which the results of an empirical study have been used to design a training experience tailored to intensive care units (ICUs). The aim of the training experience is to make the involved physicians aware of the influence of their decision-making (DM) processes, improving the quality of care they offer and making this research relevant and transformative. The research is based on a phenomenological approach and has as its object the discursive practices used as litmus tests to identify the patterns of behaviour and meaning which surround actions. Its findings lead to (a) discovering which communicative practices “constitute” the deliberative profiles of each ICU involved in the research project and (b) developing a method to understand how different discursive acts influence DM processes. This allows the design of two types of training experiences, one specifically tailored to the ICUs involved in the research project and another more generally addressed to physicians working in ICU contexts.