Innovations that foster Education of Shared Decision Making for Patients/ Families
Background/Objectives
Momentum for patient and caregiver engagement in health and social care is growing across Ontario/Canada. This is evidenced by a number of recently released strategies and frameworks highlighting the importance of involving Ontarians in their own care as informed consumers of health and social services. Prevention or treatment decisions in healthcare have been found to be optimized when the research evidence, patient preferences and clinical expertise are considered. Recent surveys conducted in Ontario show that there remains room for improvement with regards to increasing parents’ capacity to make informed decisions.
Providing Shared Decision Making (SDM) education sessions proactively for patients/families who were at a high likelihood of having multiple and challenging health care decisions was anticipated to be a valuable intervention. Such sessions encouraged patients/families to explore, research and use all the SDM tools available to them along their health care journey. Rather than just involving decision aids or coaching at the time of a decision, providing proactive education takes a different approach to gaining the skills of how to come to a preferred decision with challenging health decisions and strengthen the family’s problem - solving skills.
The objective of the education sessions was to a) unpack the concept of SDM, b) demonstrate the anatomy of SDM guided choices, c) introduce decision coaching and d) show examples of how SDM helps in challenging decisions and decisions that are challenging.
Description
Through the lens of equity, diversity and inclusion we provided education and training that built the skills needed for SDM and fostered a culture that imbedded patient and parent values, engagement in the decision process and helped to improve the parent’s knowledge about their children’s care options as well as increase participation in treatment decisions. Further, depending on the condition and severity, parents and caregivers experience a significant amount of decisional conflict, stress and concern when making treatment decisions for their children that can lead to undesired outcomes, such as delaying the decision, regret about the decision or blaming health providers.
To promote informed decision-making among parents and caregivers, various interventions/tools have been developed, Factors that affected parent participation in decision-making included professional attitudes, culture about the involvement of parents, organizational attributes (e.g., availability of treatment options), specific features of the child’s condition, and parental characteristics such as their personality, values, beliefs and prior knowledge and experience.
Significance
Proactive education sessions, training and awareness builds the skills needed for SDM and fosters a culture that embeds patient/family values and engagement in the decision process and helps to improve patient/family knowledge about their children’s care options as well as increase their participation in treatment decisions. It gives families the confidence and tools to use this information and SDM techniques proactively to change how they make medical decisions and alter the trajectory of their health care journey by taking a more systematic approach to decision A well-informed patient is an empowered patient. And an empowered patient is key to a healthier future.
making.
This innovative approach will be described in our poster presentation.
