Patient-Centeredness Through Shared Decision-Making

Central to patient-centered care is the collaboration between the clinician and the patient for whom they are caring, incorporating the patient’s goals, values, preferences, and identified needs. An important component of patient-centered care is shared decision-making. This is the process of jointly making health care decisions based on information exchange between the clinician and patient to determine the best medical care for the patient in a given clinical situation. The patient must receive accurate and understandable information about the options for assessing or treating their medical problem, and the clinician must receive information to understand the patient’s goals, values, preferences, and potential barriers to carry out the agreed upon care. Decision aids are available to assist in shared decision-making for many medical conditions. The use of shared decision-making has been shown to improve health care outcomes, especially patients’ perceptions of their care.