New NICE guidance supports shared decision making

New recommendations published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) advise that shared decision making should become routine across all healthcare settings.

NICE defines shared decision making as the collaborative process involving an individual and their healthcare professional working together to reach a joint decision regarding their care.

The new guideline offers advice on how to engage people who are accessing care in the shared decision-making process.

It advises doing this through honest conversation and by providing information resources before, during and after appointments.

In addition, the guideline suggest that organisations should consider appointing a patient director to support the embedding of shared decision making, where possible.

Further recommendations include organisational planning, training and healthcare delivery to help organisations improve staff awareness of the patient involvement.

NICE has also collaborated with NHS England and NHS Improvement to develop a standards framework to determine whether the quality of shared decision-making support tools is sufficient.

“We’re delighted to see this shared decision making guideline published and we hope it will help people using healthcare services and healthcare supplies feel more confident in discussing care and treatment options with their healthcare teams,” said Gillian Leng, chief executive of NICE.

“These recommendations should help healthcare professionals to embed good practice in all their interactions with the people they are caring for and at an organisational level. We view these recommendations as underpinning the implementation of all NICE’s work, and it’s important that these recommendations are put into practice at all levels across the system to support patient care,” she added.