DECISION HELPER™
Center for Shared Decision Making has developed a generic patient decision aid template called DECISION HELPER™. The DECISION HELPER™ has been developed through a systematic development process based on International Patient Decision Aids Standards, in collaboration with Kolding School of Design. The generic template DECISION HELPER™ can be adjusted to fit the specific clinical decision making situation.
The DECISION HELPER™ has been tested in various clinical decision making situations to ensure its effectiveness for new patient groups, in different decision making contexts, and across various clinical departments.
The DECISION HELPER™ is a central element in the Center for Shared Decision Making’s model for implementing shared decision making, SDM:HOSP.
Frequently asked questions about the DECISION HELPER™
To support shared decision making, the patient and clinician can use a patient decision aid, which helps clarify possible treatments, examinations, and other options, allowing both parties to select the pathway that best aligns with the patient’s preferences.
At the Center for Shared Decision Making, we define a patient decision aid as:
A patient decision aid presents information about options, benefits, and harms. Its purpose is to support patients in clarifying what is important to them and, together with healthcare professionals, choose what best fits the patient’s preferences.
You can choose to develop a patient decision aid entirely from scratch. This approach involves using a custom framework and requires a systematic development process with the involvement of key stakeholders throughout the process. The systematic development of patient decision aids requires a certain level of expertise and entails significant effort, testing, and a thorough understanding of the international patient decision aids standards (IPDAS). Read about the systematic development process by Witteman et al., (2021) “Systematic Development of Patient Decision Aids: An Update from the IPDAS Collaboration”, which is an update of the original 2013 article by Coulter et al., “A systematic development process for patient decision aids”.
At Center for Shared Decision Making we have developed a generic patient decision aid template for use in different clinical settings in collaboration with Kolding School of Design, Denmark. The generic patient decision aid is called DECISION HELPER™ and is built around what we in Denmark refer to as the "conversation model". This is a structured framework, that we use to train clinicians in shared decision making. This model consists of five steps, which are detailed in the article Lessons in Integrating Shared Decision-Making Into Cancer Care
Karina Dahl Steffensen, Mette Vinter, Dorthe Crüger, Kathrina Dankl, Angela Coulter, Brad Stuart, Leonard L. Berry
Journal of Oncology Practice 2018 14:4, 229-235.
See figure 1 for a detailed view of an illustration of the patient decision-aid template and the five essential items included in it.
From the generic patient decision aid template clinicians can develop new or adapt already existing Decision Helpers. When we support clinicians in the development of new Decision Helpers we also follow the IPDAS systematic development process. However, we are able to skip certain steps in the process because we utilize the generic DECISION HELPER™ template, which is well-tested and has been validated for creating Decision Helpers.
The DECISION HELPER™ is protected by trademark and cannot be replicated in its current form, including its design, color scheme, and format, without a formal collaboration agreement with us.
Read more about the development process of the DECISION HELPER™.
You can explore our library of approximately 100 Decision Helpers (patient decision aids) here:: Alphabetical library of developed Decision Helpers
While they are not directly available for order or use outside Denmark in their current form, we are open for collaborations involving translation or adaptation to suit your local needs. Contact us at CFFB@rsyd.dk.
A DECISION HELPER™ is built on the digital DECISION HELPER™ building platform, which is available to use for all clinicians in Denmark who can log into the DECISION HELPER™ building platform from their work PC. It is available in Danish and English at present. The platform consists of mandatory and optional elements, where the clinician fills in clinical content. The mandatory elements help ensure compliance with IPDAS standards.
You may translate already existing Decision Helpers from our library, but this requires permission from the original developers and assistance to insert the translated content into the building platform and for our designer to create this in the chosen language.
Yes, you can. However, this involves a more extensive process, including:
- A formal forward-backward translation of our template according to formal international principles such as Beatons/WHO guidelines for forward-backward translation and documentation of the steps
- Collaboration with us and our designer to manually create the tool
- Developing the clinical content through a structured process and workshops, including patient involvement
- Testing the developed patient decision aid
DECISION HELPER™ and implementation
The use of the DECISION HELPER™ is embedded in our systematic implementation process at hospital departments in Denmark, which includes training leaders and clinicians, developing patient decision aids, and establishing process plans. Read more about SDM:HOSP - a generic model for hospital-based implementation of shared decision making.