Shared clinical decision-making experiences in nursing: A qualitative study

Abstract

Background Shared decision making (SDM) is a patient-centred nursing concept that emphasises the autonomy of the patient. It is a co-operative process of exchanging information, communication and response, and treatment decisions made between medical staff and patients. In this study, we explored the experience of clinical nursing staff participating in SDM. Methods We adopted a qualitative research method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 nurses at a medical centre in northern Taiwan. The data obtained from interview recordings were transferred to verbatim manuscripts. Content analysis was used to analyse and summarise the data. Results Clinical nursing staff should have basic professional skills, communication and response skills, respect and cultural sensitivity, the ability to form a co-operative team, the ability to search for and integrate empirical data, and the basic ability to edit media to participate in SDM. Conclusions The results of this study describe the experiences of clinical nursing staff participating in SDM, which can be used as a reference for nursing education and nursing administrative supervisors to plan and enhance professional nursing SDM in nursing education.