Submitted by Marleen Kunneman & Victor Montori
In an earlier post, we reflected on technically correct and humanistic shared decision making (SDM). In our view, it is unclear “whether having a technically correct structure of the SDM process improves the likelihood that the care decisions made will contribute to improve the patient situation.” We called to look beyond what is technically correct, to uncover humanistic SDM and caring conversations.
We recently published a systematic literature review in which we assessed the extent to which evaluations of SDM assess the extent and quality of humanistic communication, such as respect, compassion, and empathy. We looked for studies evaluating SDM in actual clinical decisions using validated SDM measures. We found 154 studies, of which only 14 (9%) made at least one statement on humanistic communication. This happened in framing the study (N=2), measuring impact (e.g., empathy, respect, interpersonal skills; N=9), as patients’ or clinicians’ accounts of SDM (N=2), in interpreting the study results (N=3), and in discussing implications of the study findings (N=3).
In addition, we looked whether the validated SDM measures used contained items on humanistic communication. The eleven SDM measures used contained a total of 192 items. Of these, only 7 (3.6%) assessed aspects of humanistic communication.
Our review shows that assessments of the quality of SDM focus narrowly on SDM technique and rarely assess humanistic aspects of the patient-clinician conversation. We conclude that considering SDM as merely a technique may reduce SDM’s patient-centeredness and undermine its contribution to patient care.
In evaluating technical SDM, we have measured with our eyes and our ears. Perhaps the fox from “The Little Prince” was on the right track when he noted: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
The full paper was published in Patient Education and Counseling and can be found here.
This study was part of the Fostering Fit by Recognizing Opportunity STudy (FROST) program, and has been made possible by a Mapping the Landscape, Journeying Together grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Research Institute.
