Shared Decision Making update

A blog by Alison Wilkinson, Physiotherapist, It's All About People Personalisation Team

We are several months into our role in supporting clinicians, system-wide, to embrace the use of the Decision Support Tools (DST) for Osteoarthritis (OA) of the hip and knee.

We have met and spoken to many people and discovered that sadly most clinicians were not aware of the tools. The continued pressures of working in the NHS and an ever-increasing demand make it an uphill struggle to keep abreast with all new developments, however helpful they may be.

Despite this, the tools have been met with a very positive response from both clinicians and people requiring care, sparking conversations and questions about the hip and knee treatment journey and how best we can utilise these tools along that journey.

We have been able to engage with clinicians from across the pathway - GPs and First Contact Practitioners (FCP) to Consultants and all of the workforce inbetween -  but there is much more work to do!

Initial CollaBorate data Nic (Nicola Bussey, ULHT) and I have collected in Physiotherapy is extremely positive. It tells us that people feel they are having a Shared Decision Making conversation, but it raises the question, "Do people really know what a Shared Decision Making conversation should look like?"

Preparing people seems to be the next sensible step in engaging them in conversations about what is important and what matters to them and their care.

One of the biggest challenges for everyone is being able to access the tools easily. Whilst being available online, the forms are unable to be completed digitally, at the moment. Also, how we communicate that a tool has been used with a person, is proving to be difficult. For example, we don't currently know if a DST has been used in Primary Care when a person arrives at Outpatients. With so many different system partners using a variety of different IT and documentation, it is a difficult obstacle to overcome. 

Currently, we are using the tools in paper format so that we are making as many partners aware that people might start bringing these with them, to their appointments. 

Next up is a meeting with the Lower limb Orthopaedic Consultants, reaching out to GPs further and AQP providers who are not yet aware of our work. We will continue to discuss the DSTs with the Co-production group so we get their unique perspective on how best to utilise the resource.

Then, it's about introducing the Finding Answers approach (download the Finding Answers poster from the link in the side panel) to people and clinicians. 

Nic and I are also fully-fledged Shared Decision Making Trainers. We hope to be delivering that course content to you very soon.

For more information about the Shared Decision Making courses, including future course dates, visit our Shared Decision Making page

To work with Alison or Nicola on Shared Decision Making, please contact us via lhnt.itsallaboutpeople@nhs.net