The paper illustrates how practice can be assessed empirically to determine how it fits into the structure. Strategies can be implemented to move practice from one part of the structure to another part.

The aim of this article is to identify how health care professionals and patients experience patient participation in decision-making processes in hospitals. Eighteen semi-structured interviews with experts from different disciplines such as medicine and nursing in surgical departments as well as patients who have undergone surgical treatment constitute the data. By content analysis four categories of patient participation were identified: information dissemination, formulation of options, integration of information, and control. To meet the increasing demands of patient participation, this categorization with four identified critical areas for participation in decision-making has important implications in guiding information support for patients prior to surgery and during hospitalization.

This study improves our understanding of patients' participation in hospital treatment-decision processes. We explored the degree of patient participation perceived by both patients and healthcare professionals in four phases of the decision process: information dissemination, formulation of options, integration of information, and control within four models of interactions between healthcare professionals and patients: the paternalistic model, the shared model, the informed model, and the non-paternalistic model. The analysis was based on 18 in-depth, exploratory interviews with patients and healthcare professionals in six surgical units in Norway. Knowledge about how patients and healthcare professionals interact in the surgical-decision process is important for developing systems and arenas for patient participation in practice, and for a climate and culture to further support the implementation.

The instrument can be a tool for managers and healthcare professionals in the implementation of patient participation in clinical practice. Data from the instrument can be useful to identify health services being provided and what areas that could strengthen patient participation.

The aim of this paper is to describe the development of a new, brief, easy-to-administer self-reported instrument designed to assess patient participation in decision making in surgical treatment. We describe item generation, psychometric testing, and validity of the instrument. The final scale consisted of four factors: information dissemination (5 items), formulation of options (4 items), integration of information (4 items), and control (3 items). The analysis demonstrated a reasonable level of construct validity and reliability. The instrument applies to patients in surgical wards and can be used to identify the health services that are being provided and the areas that could strengthen patient participation.