We could have told them this! Researchers in Germany found that fibromyalgia patients had frustrating interactions with their doctors. They came up with a shared decision-making training program for the doctors. Then they did a study where some patients were chosen by chance to either get a shared decision-making or get regular treatment plus a computer based information package. All patients got the same treatment options. There were only 85 patients in the study, 44 who ended up in the group getting the shared decision-making. Guess what! The quality of doctor-patient interaction was much better with the group getting the shared decision-making compared with the group only getting regular treatment plus the computer based information.
It seems like common sense to patients, but I guess it is good news that researchers are least noticing that when doctors involved patients in making decisions it helped the patients feel better.
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