Decision aids

Decision aids are interventions or tools designed to facilitate shared decision making and patient participation in health care decisions.

Decision support interventions help people think about choices they face; they describe where and why choice exists; and they provide information about options, including, where reasonable, the option of taking no action. These interventions aim to help people to deliberate, independently or in collaboration with others, about options by considering relevant attributes to help them forecast how they might feel about short, intermediate and long-term outcomes which have relevant consequences. Decision aids can be of any type but are most commonly pamphlets, videos, or web-based tools. Decision aids support the process of constructing preferences and eventual decision making, appropriate to their individual situation.