Measuring Shared Decision Making in Psychiatric Care

The official published article is available online at http://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201100496.OBJECTIVE: Shared decision making is widely recognized to facilitate effective health care; tools are needed to measure the level of shared decision making in psychiatric practice. METHODS: A coding scheme assessing shared decision making in medical settings (1) was adapted, including creation of a manual. Trained raters analyzed 170 audio recordings of psychiatric medication check-up visits. RESULTS: Inter-rater reliability among three raters for a subset of 20 recordings ranged from 67% to 100% agreement for the presence of each of nine elements of shared decision making and 100% for the overall agreement between provider and consumer. Just over half of the decisions met minimum criteria for shared decision making. Shared decision making was not related to length of visit after controlling for complexity of decision. CONCLUSIONS: The shared decision making rating scale appears to reliably assess shared decision making in psychiatric practice and could be helpful for future research, training, and implementation efforts