The growing emphasis on patient centered care is increasing the demand on physicians’ time and effort to engage patients and their families in decision making regarding treatment. At the same time, the clinical encounter is becoming more challenging because evaluative testing strategies and decisions about disease management are increasingly complex. In this context, growing interest in decisio...

BACKGROUND Standards for patient decision aids require that information and options be presented in a balanced manner; this requirement is based on the argument that balanced presentation is essential to foster informed decision making. If information is presented in an incomplete/non-neutral manner, it can stimulate cognitive biases that can unduly affect individuals' knowledge, perceptions of...

BACKGROUND Providing patient-centered care requires that patients partner in their personal health-care decisions to the full extent desired. Patient decision aids facilitate processes of shared decision-making between patients and their clinicians by presenting relevant scientific information in balanced, understandable ways, helping clarify patients' goals, and guiding decision-making process...

BACKGROUND Gender differences in communication styles between clinicians and patients have been postulated to impact patient care, but the extent to which the gender dyad structure impacts outcomes in shared decision making remains unclear. METHODS Participant-level meta-analysis of 775 clinical encounters within 7 randomized trials where decision aids, shared decision making tools, were used...

Despite the proven efficacy of decision aids as interventions for increasing patient engagement and facilitating shared decision making, they are not used routinely in clinical care. Findings from a project designed to achieve such integration, conducted at five primary care practices in 2010-12, document low rates of distribution of decision aids to eligible patients due for colorectal cancer ...