Learning shared decision making in postgraduate medical education

This dissertation provides valuable insights into learning of shared decision making (SDM) during postgraduate medical education. SDM is widely recognised as the preferred approach to involve patients in medical decisions. However, its implementation in clinical practice remains limited, and training healthcare professionals is considered an important strategy for addressing this challenge.
First, it was identified what residents need to learn to perform adequate SDM in clinical practice. This can help define educational objectives, guide observations of SDM during consultations and inform feedback. Next, an exploration of residents’ SDM performance indicated that further improvement is possible. Additionally, an exploration of their educational needs highlighted the importance of continuous attention to SDM for developing knowledge and skills and for practising them in clinical practice. The findings also revealed that supervisors require parallel training to effectively support residents’ learning.
Finally, an SDM training programme was developed, leading to educational design principles that outline how learning could be constructed and how the content could be formulated. These principles can assist educational designers in developing SDM training tailored to specific healthcare educational contexts. The training programme appeared to encourage specific learning activities in the workplace, and insights were gained into factors influencing workplace learning of SDM.