It Shouldn’t Be a Battle: Customizing Shared Decision Making to Meet Patients’ Preferences

In health care, the premise of shared decision making (SDM) is deeply rooted in an ethical viewpoint of patient-centered care, expressed in the saying “nothing about me without me.”1 This is a contrast to an older ethical framework based on paternalism, which could be expressed as “doctor knows best.” Although SDM care is widely embraced in theory, its implementation in clinical care is uneven, if not substandard.