Purpose: We sought to assess the perspective of resident physicians regarding the importance of decision support as part of a primary care clinic visit.
Method: We recruited resident physicians in one academic internal medical practice. Resident physicians from one academic internal medicine practice were surveyed either on paper during clinic time or via the online survey tool, surveymonkey.com. Outcomes of interest were awareness of an existing decision support system and, using five-point likert scaled questions, perspectives on the importance of decision support use as a part of the patient's clinic visit.
Result: 68% (47 of 69) residents responded to the survey. 40% were female and the average age was 29. Respondents were well distributed across first, second, and third year of residency (32%, 38%, and 26%, respectively). All respondents were either a little interested (38%) or very interested (62%) in having their patients use decision support materials. Respondents largely agreed or strongly agreed that decision aids materials are a good use of clinic time (79%) and resources (81%), and improve the quality of care provided to patients (81%). A smaller majority agreed or strongly agreed that decision support materials are helpful to patients (60%) and that, among all services provided at the clinic, distribution of decision support materials is important (68%). Nearly all residents were familiar with shared decision making (94%), comfortable engaging in it with patients (94%), believed that it improves outcomes (87%), and believe that it is important to involve patients in the decision making process, even if it means they might not choose the recommended course of action (96%).
Conclusion: Resident physicians in our internal medicine practice are comfortable with the concepts of shared decision making, and find decision support to be an important use of patient time in clinic and of clinic time and resources.
See more of: The 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making