Resource Library: Shared Decision Making

  • People want to be more involved in decisions about their health and care, and Shared Decision Making (SDM) ensures that people are supported to be as involved in the decision-making process as they would wish.  

    SDM means people are supported to understand the care, treatment, and support options available and the risks, benefits and consequences of those options, enabling them to make an informed decision about a preferred course of action, based on evidence based, good quality information and their personal preferences. 


    • Shared Decision Making (SDM) is a collaborative process through which a clinician supports a patient to reach a decision about their treatment. It ensures that individuals are supported to make decisions that are right for them.

      Download our evidence-based infographic on SDM by clicking the link below

      Evidence-based infographic on SDM

      • The Your Health, Your Conversation is a system-wide campaign that supports patients to think about what matters to them in advance of their appointments.  We want patients to arrive prepared and empowered to make the most of their time with you, and other other professionals involved in their care.  

        The Prepared Patient Toolkit, hosted on Teamnet, has been developed to support implementation of this campaign. It is designed for use across primary, secondary and community care settings to provide a consistent message to all patients – that is okay to ask. 

        Follow the link below to access the toolkit. 

        Your Health, Your Conversation (Prepared Patient Toolkit)

        • Our fully accredited SDM training course is for anyone in the health, care, social and voluntary sector, directly involved in personalised care and support, who would like to improve their understanding and application of SDM. The training will be of particular benefit to anyone seeking to address communication breakdowns or adopting a proactive approach to reducing any health inequalities.   

          This interactive training includes: 

          ·         Benefits of SDM 

          ·         Key elements of SDM conversation 

          ·         Processes, preferences and risk management 

          ·         Role of health literacy 

          ·         Creating the right conditions for success 

          ·         Application to practice 

          The course is fully accredited by the Personalised Care Institute (PCI).  and you will also receive a PCI accredited CPD certificate. Time to complete: 3 hours. 

          Click on the link below to access SDM training.

          ICS SDM Training 

          • This programme from NHSE e-lfh contains modules providing guidance on what SDM is and how to implement it in practice. For example, the 'Dialogues in SDM' module is a course for GPs that provides a visual interactive training experience designed to prompt discussion about, and highlight strategies for (SDM) in the General Practice context. It comprises 12 scenarios which have been reconstructed from the caseloads of working GPs in the West Midlands.  


            • The Personalised Care Institute Shared Decision Making eLearning covers aspects of the core capabilities to communicate and build relationships, as well as to engage, enable and support people, as described within the PCI curriculum (2020). Time to complete: 30 minutes.  

              Shared Decision Making (personalisedcareinstitute.org.uk)

              • To support implementation of the NICE guideline on shared decision making, Keele University and NICE have worked in partnership to develop an online learning package. This is suitable for all healthcare professionals and aims to equip people with the skills and knowledge they need to have good-quality shared decision-making conversations with the people they are caring for. 

                The learning package is free to access and users can do so by clicking on the links below. It takes approximately 4 hours to complete and is made up of 6 modules: 

                • Virtual patient avatars from the Personalised Care Institute. These provide a non-immersive reality training simulation to explore the key Shared Decision Making (SDM) micro skills of agenda-setting, teach-back, exploring patient preferences around treatment options and reaching a shared decision. Each Virtual Patient consultation can be completed in 10-15 minutes.  

                  For further information and to access the avatars please click on the link below.

                  Virtual Patient Avatars (PCI)

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