Editorial Shared Decision-Making and Patient Decision Aids Is It Time?

The quality and cost of medical care is determined in largepart by the decisions that clinicians and patients make every day about seeking care, having tests, starting treat-ments, and stopping treatments. There are situations in medicine in which a treatment or approach has considerable evidence of significant benefit with minimal or no harm. High-quality decisions in these situations are about efficiently delivering proven, effective care to all those who may benefit. Articles see p 251 and 260 A surprising number of medical decisions, however, do not have a single “best ” answer; instead, they require clinicians and patients to make tradeoffs. In these situations, often called preference-sensitive decisions, the quality of the deci-sion is determined by whether the test or treatment is clinically appropriate and reflects patient’s informed goals and preferences.1 Shared decision-making is one approach t