Shared decision making in pain care: a systematic review study protocol of decision aids

Shared decision making (SDM) in healthcare is an ethical imperative and essential to patient-centred care. SDM is particularly useful when several preference-sensitive treatment options exist and in the setting of chronic conditions or longitudinal management. Chronic pain management embodies these characteristics, yet SDM often remains insufficient in this population. Decision aids are designed to facilitate SDM by helping patients and clinicians understand treatment options, clarify patient values, and guide collaborative decision processes. Despite their importance, the use of decision aids in pain management is inconsistent and their reported effectiveness has been variable. However, the current landscape of decision aids for pain management has not been described. This lack of understanding of what tools exist, how they are structured, what decisions they address and how they were developed makes it difficult to advance implementation efforts or identify meaningful gaps in available resources. As such, the purpose of this systematic review is to identify and characterise decision aids for pain management across the lifespan. Specifically, this review will describe the clinical decisions addressed, decision aid structures and delivery formats, development processes and outcomes used to evaluate the impact of existing decision aids.

Electronic searches were performed in PubMed, CINAHL and Ovid Embase from inception through January 2026. Studies will be assessed for quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Data will be extracted and presented with the aim of describing the: (a) content and structures of pain-related decision aids, (b) development processes used to create existing pain-related decision aids and (c) outcome measures used to evaluate the impact of decision aids in clinical care.

This review does not require ethics approval. Findings will be disseminated to clinicians, researchers and patients through journal publications, conference presentations and in collaboration with patient partners.

CRD420251085288.