Shared Decision Making (SDM) is a central component of Realistic Medicine and supports patients and their families to be involved in decisions about their care.
Watch the animation below for an overview of Shared Decision Making.
NES in collaboration with Scottish Government have developed an online resource to provide an introduction to Shared Decision Making. This resource is for all staff working in health and social care. The learning resource covers:
The learning will take a maximum of 30 minutes to complete. There is a knowledge check quiz at the end of the resource and we would encourage people to complete this as it will provide the learner with a certificate to evidence their learning.
NES have developed an online toolkit How to Measure Shared Decision Making. This toolkit is for all staff working in health and social care and provides the resources and materials to allow teams, services or organisations to evidence and measure peoples’ experiences of shared decision-making.
The toolkit includes :
Please access the toolkit by using the link below:
How to Measure Shared Decision Making
NES has developed an online module, Shared Decision Making which guides you through what Shared Decision Making is and how you can implement it in practice effectively and immediately. This interactive and reflective module provides practical hints and tips on communication and a how to talk about risks and statistics in ways that are meaningful to people.
NOTE: This module replaces Realistic Conversations: Shared decision making in practice. If you have previously completed Realistic Conversations, and you wish to undertake the new module, please be aware that your previous record of completion will be removed, and you will receive a message indicating this when you select launch to start the new module. We strongly recommend taking this module to refresh your understanding and knowledge of shared decision making. Once you successfully complete this module, you will receive an updated record of completion.
Please note you must be logged in to your TURAS account to access this.
The ‘It’s OK to Ask’ campaign is promoted by NHS Scotland to empower patients to take an active role in their healthcare journey. Providing guidance on how to ask questions during any consultations or conversations about their health and care, the campaign aims to make patients more involved and informed on the treatment options available to them.
Learn more about the 'It's OK to Ask' campaign and access resources for patients and healthcare professionals.
Information on how to promote the campaign on your own social media channels.
The Psychology Directorate in NHS Education for Scotland (NES) offers education and training in psychological skills for all healthcare, social care and third-sector staff, including training which incorporates themes of person-centred working and shared decision making.
The Physical Health Workstream provides education and training to all healthcare, social care and third-sector staff who are providing care to adults with long term conditions and persistent physical symptoms.
The Paediatric Psychology Workstream provides training in Psychological Skills – Paediatric Healthcare (TIPS-PH) for all paediatric healthcare, social care and third-sector staff who work with children and young people with long term physical health conditions. Access the full programme (PDF).
The Health Improvement Workstream provides training in behaviour change to all health, social care and third sector staff who support people to change their behaviour and enhance their health and wellbeing. This includes the MAP (motivation, action prompts) programme which aims to support any practitioner to enhance their knowledge, skills and confidence through incorporating the most up-to-date evidence-based techniques.
Having realistic conversations about what matters to a person and options we have available is important for shared decision making discussions and other situations such anticipatory care planning. We can use proven conversation models and language to help us with these discussions.
Health literacy tools and techniques support shared decision making as ‘Health literacy is about people having sufficient knowledge, understanding, confidence and skills to cope with the complex demands of modern health care.’ NES and NHS England developed a module to introduce some useful techniques to aid communication.
Effective Communication for Healthcare (EC4H) is Scotland’s leading NHS communication education programme. EC4H provides workshops supporting staff training in shared decision-making.
Scotland’s House of Care programme is a proven approach that supports and enables people to articulate their own needs and to decide on their own priorities, through a process of joint decision making, goal setting and action planning.
Content updated July 2022