Supporting Patients Facing Difficult Health Care Decisions: Use of the Ottawa Decision Support Framework

Objective: To investigate family physicians' views on factors that make health care decisions difficult for patients, interventions family physicians use to support patients making decisions, and interventions proposed by the Ottawa Decision Support Framework (ODSF).

Design: Thirteen group discussions.

Setting: Five family practice units.

Participants: One hundred twenty family physicians.

Interventions: The multifaceted implementation intervention consisted of feedback from participants, a reminder at point of care, and an interactive workshop. During the workshop, family physicians were asked about their views on 2 videos both showing the concluding phase of a simulated clinical encounter with a woman facing a decision about hormone therapy. One video showed usual care; the other showed use of the ODSF process and related tools. Content was analyzed using observations by non-participants, field notes, material collected from participants during workshops, evaluation forms completed at the end of workshops, and comments written on exit questionnaires from the implementation trial.

Main Outcome Measures: Family physicians' views on the types of difficult decisions their patients face, the factors that make decisions difficult for patients, the interventions family physicians use to support patients' decisions, and the interventions proposed by the ODSF.

Results: The 2 most frequently cited factors making decisions difficult for patients were experiencing uncertainty and fears about adverse outcomes. Before being introduced to the ODSF, participants had used mostly information-related strategies to provide decision support. After learning about the ODSF, participants overwhelmingly identified assessing patients' values as a priority. At the end of the workshop, the 5 changes in practice participants most frequently intended to make were, in order of importance, to assess patients' values, to ask about patients' preferred role in decision making, to screen for decisional conflict, to assess support or undue pressure on patients, and to increase patients' involvement in decision making.

Conclusion: The ODSF process and related tools have the potential to broaden family physicians' views on supporting patients facing difficult decisions.