Assessment of Physicians' Perspective of Shared Decision Making in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Shared decision making is an essential component of a patient-centered healthcare system. Several studies have evaluated patients' perception of shared decision making; however, studies reporting physicians' perception of the shared decision-making process are lacking. The objective of this study was to assess physicians' perspectives on shared decision making with their patients in a tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.This is a cross-sectional study, in which we adopted the nine-item physician version of the shared decision-making questionnaire (SDM-Q-Doc) to assess physicians' perception of shared decision making. The questionnaire was distributed online and in hard copy form randomly to our institution's physicians.We collected a total of 125 responses from various specialties. Means and percentage of agreement were tested, with the highest percentage of agreement ranging from 88% to 96.8%. There were significant differences between the groups regarding age and medical degree. There were no significant differences noted for sex or department.Our findings suggest that most physicians at our institution have a positive attitude toward the process of sharing medical decisions with their patients.