Patient Preferences as Guidance for Information Framing in a Medical Shared Decision-Making Approach: The Bridge Between Nudging and Patient Preferences

Abstract

Guidelines and policies support the decision process to make sure that patients can benefit from the best treatment for their condition. The implementation of guidelines and policies is evolving, allowing decision makers to be able to choose between alternatives while considering the effect of biases and fallacies that may hinder their choice. Patient preferences play a precious role in those decisions in which is not possible to recognize an objective "best" alternative and it's not possible to nudge them toward one alternative based on scientific evidence and clinical experience. Having patient input as part of the decision process itself would allow the recognition of the attributes related to what is relevant for patients, which can be considered as important as clinical data. The authors advocate that the integration of preference-sensitive attributes with decision policies could provide a benefit against fallacies in the decision process when there is not a "best" alternative, and a shared decision-making paradigm allows both patient and clinician to recognize and pursue the option that best fits the individual case.

Keywords: health policies; nudge; patient preferences; shared decision-making.