How Might Shared Decision Making Influence Litigiousness?

In the “shared decision-making” approach to patient care, providers give information, but decision making is shared by providers and patients. This differs from the traditional model, in which providers have all the information and give instructions to patients.

Researchers used an Internet platform to recruit study participants. First, participants were randomized to one of three scenarios depicting different doctor–patient interactions around the decision whether to proceed with a computed tomography (CT) scan: no shared decision making, brief shared decision making, or thorough shared decision making. In all three versions, the final decision was to forego the CT scan. Then the participants learned that a case of appendicitis was missed, …