Systematic Review of the Effects of Shared Decision-Making on Patient Satisfaction, Treatment Adherence and Health Status

Despite the considerable interest in applying SDM clinically, little research regarding its effectiveness has been done to date. It has been argued that SDM is particularly suitable for long-term decisions, especially in the context of a chronic illness, and when the intervention contains more than one session. Our results show that under such circumstances, SDM can be an effective method of reaching a treatment agreement. Evidence for the effectiveness of SDM in the context of other types of decisions, or in general, is still inconclusive. Future studies of SDM should probably focus on long-term decisions.