Patients should be involved in making decisions about their health care. The ethical imperative of autonomy is reflected in legal trends that require a high standard of disclosure for informed consent, amounting to a principle of informed choice. Outcomes of care and adherence to treatment regimens improve when patients are more involved. 5 Consumerism is part of the social spirit, and governme...

At its core, shared decision making (SDM) is grounded in the belief that patients have a fundamental right to understand all the medical options available to them, along with the risks and benefits associated with those options. It further implies that patients have a right to participate fully with their providers in the process of discussing these options and in making medical decisions about...

Shared decision making (SDM), a collaborative process whereby patients and professionals make health care decisions together, is a cornerstone of ethical patient care. The patient-clinician communication necessary to achieve SDM depends on many factors, not the least of which is a shared language (sometimes with the aid of a medical interpreter). However, even when a patient and clinician are s...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the extent to which clinicians use clinically-efficacious decision aids as intended during implementation in practice and how fidelity to usage instructions correlates with shared decision making (SDM) outcomes. METHODS Participant-level meta-analysis including six practice-based randomized controlled trials of SDM in various clinical settings encompassing a range of dec...

Shared decision making enables a clinician and patient to participate jointly in making a health decision, having discussed the options and their benefits and harms, and having considered the patient's values, preferences and circumstances. It is not a single step to be added into a consultation, but a process that can be used to guide decisions about screening, investigations and treatments. T...

BACKGROUND Increasing emphasis is being placed on involving patients in decisions concerning their health. This shift towards more patient engagement by health professionals and towards more desire by patients for participation may be partly based on socio-political factors. METHODS To compare the preferences for shared decision making of patients from eastern and western Germany we analysed ...

BACKGROUND There is increasing interest in interventions that can support patients who face difficult decisions and individuals who need to modify their behaviour to achieve better outcomes. Evidence for effectiveness is used to categorize patients care. Effective care is where evidence of benefit outweighs harm: patients should always receive this type of care, where indicated. Preference-sens...

The strongest argument for shared decision making is that patients have a fundamental right to understand all the reasonable medical options and the arguments for and against each option. Simply put, informing and involving patients in medical decisions is the right thing to do. The majority of people want to make decisions about their health care -rather than be told what to do or make decisio...

Author’s Address: Juliette Harik, PhD is affiliated with the National Center for PTSD, Executive Division, VA Medical Center (116D) 215 North Main Street, White River Junction, Vermont 05009. Email Address: [email protected]. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be treated effectively with a variety of interventions. Several different treatment approaches have received the strongest pos...