Patients should be at centre of decisions about their care, says NICE

NICE - the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - has joined forces with a wide range of leading health care organisations to help get patients more involved in decisions about their care.

SDM can improve relationships
between patients and clinicians

NICE, alongside NHS England, the General Medical Council, universities and other organisations have come together to form the ‘Shared Decision Making Collaborative’.

The collaborative hopes to promote a move away from ‘top-down’ medicine, towards a culture where clinicians and health care professionals work together with their patients to choose the most appropriate tests, treatments and support packages.

A set of intentions and commitments, which will help make shared decisions about care a reality in everyday clinical practice, has been set out by the collaborative in their consensus statement and action plan.

Professor Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive and director of health and social care at NICE, said:
“When health care professionals work together with patients, research shows that more appropriate decisions are made about their care. This can lead to improved patient safety, better patient satisfaction and more efficient use of resources.

“It’s important that a culture of shared decision making is embedded into clinical practice. NICE, through our collaboration with other leading health care organisations, will make sure that patient centred care becomes an everyday reality in our health service.”

Emma Walker, AQuA

Emma Walker, Portfolio Lead for Shared Decision Making at the Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), said:
“We are delighted to be involved with the National Shared Decision Making Consensus Statement. We are looking forward to working with a range of national partners to support the embedding of SDM into practice; drawing on AQuA’s experience of working with teams and organisations in practice and sharing a range of resources, tools and case studies that we have developed over the past 4 years.”

As part of the collaborative, NICE has pledged to:

• raise awareness and promote shared decision making at a local and national level through a series of case studies
• work with NHS England to ensure that shared decision making tools are embedded within guidance and pathways
• look at existing ways to measure shared decision making in clinical practice through its indicators programme
• advocate for research funding to look into the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of shared decision making

Other leading health care bodies have also pledged their intentions and ambitions in the action plan. These include:

• NHS England to make sure that involving patients in decisions about their care is rooted in ongoing work programmes
• Healthwatch England to help support shared decision making on a local level
• The General Medical Council to incorporate shared decision making within its Generic professional capabilities framework, which sets out the knowledge, skills and behaviours which doctors need.

To find out more about NICE, please visit their website or follow them on Twitter @NICEComms.