Reducing Unwarranted Variation in Clinical Practice by Supporting Clinicians and Patients in Decision Making
Reducing Unwarranted Variation in Clinical Practice by Supporting Clinicians and Patients in Decision Making
Variation in clinical practice in seemingly similar populations of patients has been described for more than seventy years. International collaboration to increase understanding of the sources of practice variation and respond constructively have spawned efforts to expand and better manage professional knowledge, and to elicit and accommodate the personal knowledge of patients about what matters most to them when they face medical decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The approach, which has come to be known as shared decision making, can move us toward assurance that patients receive the care they need and no less and the care they want and no more. The use of decision aids to support shared decision making can effectively address the limitations in statistical thinking among clinicians as well as patients and thereby help establish informed patient choice as a standard of practice and improve the quality of medical decision making and the efficiency of health care.
Keywords: Strüngmann Forum Reports, clinician-patient relationship, health care, informed patient choice, practice variation in medicine, shared decision making, statistical thinking
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