Shared decision-making

By engaging in shared decision-making, providers and patients ensure patient values and preferences are integral to treatment decisions. This collaborative approach fosters a partnership between patients and healthcare providers, leading to more personalized care, improved patient satisfaction, and better health outcomes. Investing in respectful, trustworthy, and informed relationships in this way causes healthcare to be more responsive to patient needs.

Advice from authors on searching for information:

Review guidelines and publications from organizations like PCORI; explore literature on patient engagement, health literacy, and shared decision-making; and investigate resources from patient advocacy groups and networks.

Organizations, repositories, websites, and other sources where you can find more information:

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) – Shared Decision Making. Provides a comprehensive overview of shared decision-making tools, resources for healthcare providers, and patient education materials. The AHRQ also offers information on implementing shared decision-making in clinical practice and the benefits for patient care.
• National Institutes of Health (NIH) – Patient-Centered Outcome Research Institute. Offers resources and research findings focused on patient-centered outcomes and shared decision-making. Includes information on how patient preferences and values are integrated into research and clinical practices.
• The Joint Commission International – Communicating Clearly and Effectively to Patients. Provides tools, tips, and strategies for navigating patient communication challenges to improve healthcare communication and patient outcomes.
• National Institutes of Health: Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan 2021–2025 lays out NIH’s goals and strategies to deepen research into the causes of health differences, strengthen scientific capacity and fairness in research participation, and enhance outreach and implementation so that all populations can achieve better health outcomes.
• American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) promotes trustworthiness between systems and clinicians, clinicians and patients, and the communities they serve, by addressing the primary causes of mistrust and misinformation to improve clinicians’ ability to deliver high-quality care.
• National Institutes of Health – Science, Health, and Public Trust provides tools to help improve the quality and usefulness of information for the public about science and health.

Challenges you may encounter while searching for information:

Limited access to proprietary or unpublished data, the diversity and fragmentation of patient engagement literature across various disciplines, staying current with evolving methodologies and guidelines, and identifying reliable sources among the vast array of available information.

Articles, books, and other publications in translational science using the indicator:

• Grabinski VF, Myckatyn TM, Lee CN, Philpott-Streiff SE, Politi MC. Importance of shared decision-making for vulnerable populations: Examples from postmastectomy breast reconstruction. Health Equity. 2018;2(1):234-238. doi: 10.1089/heq.2018.0020.
• Zisman-Ilani Y, Peek ME. Improving equity in shared decision-making. JAMA Intern Med. 2024;184(9):1130–1131. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.2993.
• Addressing child health equity through clinical decision-making. Pediatrics. February 2022; 149 (2): e2021053698. doi: 10.1542/peds.2021-053698.
• King JS, Eckman MH, Moulton BW. The potential of shared decision making to reduce health disparities. J Law Med Ethics. 2011;39 Suppl 1:30-33. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2011.00561.x.
• Durand M-A, Carpenter L, Dolan H, Bravo P, Mann M, Bunn F, et al. Do interventions designed to support shared decision-making reduce health inequalities? A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE. 2014; 9(4): e94670.