Twelve myths about shared decision making

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2014.06.014Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • This paper summarizes a keynote address held in the fall of 2013 at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare.

  • There are many misconceptions about barriers to shared decision making in practice.

  • We investigated the evidence relating to the most common of these misconceptions.

  • We discuss the twelve most prevalent and summarize the state of the evidence.

  • These misconceptions should not hold back the implementation of shared decision making across the healthcare spectrum.

Abstract

Objective

As shared decision makes increasing headway in healthcare policy, it is under more scrutiny. We sought to identify and dispel the most prevalent myths about shared decision making.

Methods

In 20 years in the shared decision making field one of the author has repeatedly heard mention of the same barriers to scaling up shared decision making across the healthcare spectrum. We conducted a selective literature review relating to shared decision making to further investigate these commonly perceived barriers and to seek evidence supporting their existence or not.

Results

Beliefs about barriers to scaling up shared decision making represent a wide range of historical, cultural, financial and scientific concerns. We found little evidence to support twelve of the most common beliefs about barriers to scaling up shared decision making, and indeed found evidence to the contrary.

Conclusion

Our selective review of the literature suggests that twelve of the most commonly perceived barriers to scaling up shared decision making across the healthcare spectrum should be termed myths as they can be dispelled by evidence.

Practice implications

Our review confirms that the current debate about shared decision making must not deter policy makers and clinicians from pursuing its scaling up across the healthcare continuum.

Keywords

Shared decision making
Implementation
Decision aids
Communication

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