Shared Decision Making or Sharing Information?

Even given identical information, patients and healthcare professionals may appropriately make conflicting decisions.

Introduce the concept of mutual two-person, as opposed to individual, decision making.

Present operational definition of shared decision making based on two-person decision theory demonstrate how to identify a shared decision, distinguish between a shared decision and some other commonly used approaches, and report the results of computer simulations that demonstrate the patterns of mutual satisfaction of various decision approached given common information.

Shared decision making yields more mutually stable and satisfactory treatment decisions than do other approaches and have the additional advantage of achieving fewer morally questionable outcomes.

In addition to shared information, shared decisions are superior to those made independently by patients or healthcare professionals.