Who should decide how much and what information is important in person-centred health care?

Authors

Mette Kjer Kaltoft, University of Southern DenmarkFollow
Jesper Bo Nielsen, University of Southern Denmark
Glenn P. Salkeld, University of WollongongFollow
Jack Dowie, University of London

RIS ID

110064

Publication Details

Kaltoft, M. Kjer., Nielsen, J. Bo., Salkeld, G. P. & Dowie, J. (2015). Who should decide how much and what information is important in person-centred health care?. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 20 (3), 192-195.

Abstract

Most guidelines for clinical practice, and especially those for the construction of decision support tools, assume that the individual person (the patient) needs to be in possession of information of particular sorts and amount in order to qualify as having made an ‘informed decision’. This often implicitly segues into the patient having made a ‘good decision’. In person-centred health care, whether, in what form, and with what weight, ‘information’ is included as a criterion of decision quality is a matter for the person involved, to decide in the light of their own values, preferences, and time and resource constraints.