Inter-professional shared decision making – increasing the “shared” in shared decision making

Abstract

Shared decision making (SDM) has been shown to increase patient engagement, patient satisfaction and adherence to treatment. Yet SDM remains underutilized in primary care due to factors such as the additional time required to implement, particularly for individual physicians. Inter-professional SDM (IP-SDM) is a model of SDM that distributes the tasks of SDM across different professionals involved in the care of the patient. IP-SDM has the potential to increase efficiency, provide more opportunities for patients to discuss the decision, and increase patient and provider satisfaction. Office visit workflows aligned to the steps of SDM allow team members to leverage their unique skills and training and enhances the decision making process for the patient. We argue that this approach should receive greater attention in primary care and throughout the healthcare system.