Deciding Together: Your Care, Your Voice
When you visit your doctor or nurse, you will often find there are decisions to be made about your health and the treatments available to you. This might involve choosing between different medications, therapies, or ways of managing a long-term condition.
It is vital that you are at the heart of this process. The best decisions are made when they are based on clinical evidence and what matters most to you.
What is Shared Decision Making?
- Your doctor or nurse is an expert in health, medicine, and treatments.
- You are the expert in your own life, your values, and how a condition or treatment affects your daily routine.
When you work together to share this knowledge, it is called ‘Shared Decision Making’.
Three Questions for Better Health
To help you get involved in your care, try to ask these three key questions during your appointment:
- What are my options? (Including the option to do nothing for now).
- What are the possible risks and benefits of each option?
- How can we make a decision together that is right for me?
Your healthcare professional is there to provide high-quality information and support you as you weigh up the pros and cons of each choice.
Tools to Help You Decide
Patient Decision Aids (PDAs) These are tools designed to help you compare different treatment options. They help you “score” what is important to you (your values) against the likely outcomes of a treatment.
Useful Resources:
- NICE Decision Aids: UK-standard aids used across the NHS.
- The Right Decisions (Scotland & NI): While Scottish-led, many of these resources are frequently used by clinicians in Northern Ireland.
- QIntervention: To calculate your risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes.