A Shared Decision-making Training for Inpatients With Schizophrenia

"Shared decision-making" is being promoted as a promising approach for engaging patients with schizophrenia in medical decisions and improving satisfaction and adherence.

To implement shared decision-making, both physicians and patients should commit to it and engage in a mutual decision process. Most research, however, has addressed interventions that either focus on the doctors' side (e.g. "communication skills") or on informing patients about treatment options (e.g. "decision aids"). These approaches have been shown to be feasible in clinical practice but had no strong effects on treatment patterns or adherence, possibly because they were insufficient to motivate and enable patients to engage actively in decision-making. Moreover, these interventions still rely on the doctor's willingness to share decisions, which has been shown to vary considerably.

To overcome these limitations and since many patients do not feel competent to participate in decision-making we developed an intervention that focuses on patients' communicative competencies. this intervention, a five session group-training, will be implemented for inpatients suffering from schizophrenia.