Clinical Practice Guideline: Shared Decision Making for Patients with Mental Health Disorders

Summary This project was a clinical practice guideline (CPG) for practitioners who deliver healthcare services to patients living with mental health disorders. The practice problem addressed by this CPG was lack of mental health patient inclusion in terms of determining treatment plans of care. In back-to-back patient satisfaction surveys, patients indicated they would like to have more say in their treatment plans. The practice problem was important to increase patient input in clinical decision-making practices of practitioners. The project question was: Does evidence support development of a CPG for mental health patient-centered input regarding treatment plans of care that was validated by an expert panel using the Appraisal of Guidelines Research Evaluation (AGREE II) instrument and approved for practice by site end-users? The purpose of this CPG was to provide practitioners with an evidence-based tool for facilitating shared decision-making (SDM) when administering care to patients with mental health disorders. An expert panel with four persons evaluated the CPG via the AGREE II instrument. The instrument consists of 23 items that are divided into six domains with two global rating items. High quality guidelines are those in which all domain scores are greater than 70%. Domain scores for the developed CPG ranged from 76% to 91.6%. Key findings involved lack of resources, laws, and regulations to govern SDM. A key recommendation was to train practitioners to support SDM with patients. This CPG may improve practitioners’ decision-making capacity, improve patient outcomes, and contribute to positive social change by promoting inclusion and equity for patients who are often marginalized due to their diagnoses.