Shared decision making in endocrinology: present and future directions

Publication date: Available online 23 February 2016 Source:The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Author(s): Rene Rodriguez-Gutierrez, Michael R Gionfriddo, Naykky Singh Ospina, Spyridoula Maraka, Shrikant Tamhane, Victor M Montori, Juan P Brito In medicine and endocrinology, there are few clinical circumstances in which clinicians can accurately predict what is best for their patients. As a result, patients and clinicians frequently have to make decisions about which there is uncertainty. Uncertainty results from limitations in the research evidence, unclear patient preferences, or an inability to predict how treatments will fit into patients' daily lives. The work that patients and clinicians do together to address the patient's situation and engage in a deliberative dialogue about reasonable treatment options is often called shared decision making. Decision aids are evidence-based tools that facilitate this process. Shared decision making is a patient-centred approach in which clinicians share information about the benefits, harms, and burden of different reasonable diagnostic and treatment options, and patients explain what matters to them in view of their particular values, preferences, and personal context. Beyond the ethical argument in support of this approach, decision aids have been shown to improve patients' knowledge about the available options, accuracy of risk estimates, and decisional comfort. Decision aids also promote patient participat...

Source: The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology - February 23, 2016 Category: Endocrinology Source Type: research