This study by staff and students at the European School of Osteopathy explored how decision-making is shared by patients and osteopathy students. Shared decision-making is associated with increased patient engagement, and improved satisfaction. The researchers used a validated scale to assess the extent that osteopathy students involved patients in decision-making, transcribing 35.5 hours of data from 30 patient-student encounters. The students did not demonstrate high levels of shared decision-making, and the authors suggest that this implies that traditional, clinician-led practice predominates. The authors reflect on the impact of mentoring from mature practitioners, the ubiquity of similar findings in other healthcare professions, and on the implications for osteopathic education.
The paper is available in full at https://chiromt.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12998-019-0260-0