Experts say that clinicians must share important decisions on the healthcare with patients and patients also must have equal participation in sharing healthcare decisions. In December 2010, 58 people from 18 countries attended a Salzburg Global Seminar to consider the role patients can and should play in healthcare decisions. Today, they publish a statement urging patients and clinicians "to work together to be co-producers of health."
It comes as the government in England finalises plans to give people more say and more choice over their care than ever before.
The experts argue that much of the care patients receive is based on the ability and readiness of individual clinicians to provide it, rather than on widely agreed standards of best practice or patients' preferences for treatment.
Results from the 2010 Cancer Patient Experience Survey seem to support this view. It found significant variations in the choice and information patients are given, and their involvement in decisions about treatment.
The experts also say that clinicians are often slow to recognise the extent to which patients' wish to be involved in understanding their health problems, in knowing the options available to them, and in making decisions that take account of their personal preferences.
As such they call on clinicians to stimulate a two-way flow of information with patients, to provide accurate information about treatment, to tailor information to individual patient needs and allow them sufficient time to consider their options. In turn, they urge patients to ask questions and speak up about their concerns, to recognise that they have a right to be equal participants in their care, and to seek and use high-quality health information.
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One of the signatories, Professor Glyn Elwyn from Cardiff University, says that despite considerable interest in shared decision making, and clear evidence of benefit, implementation within the NHS "has proved difficult and slow."
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Source-Eurekalert