OBJECTIVE: As part of a quality improvement initiative in the context of value-based health care we aimed to optimize the shared decision-making (SDM) process in the care pathway for Multiple Myeloma as part of a digital care pathway (DCP). For this, more insight was needed in health care professionals\' (HCPs\') perspectives on SDM, and how SDM elements could be addressed in a DCP for MM to facilitate HCPs\' performance of SDM.
METHODS: HCPs were interviewed as per the theory of planned behaviour and the model of organizational context and SDM (phase 1). Multidisciplinary development sessions were organized to discuss concepts of the solution with HCPs (phase 2). The solution was evaluated with two patients from the quality improvement team.
RESULTS: In phase 1, ten interviews were held. HCPs\' attitudes and the subjective norm towards SDM were positive, and the intention to perform SDM was high. The clinical environment (physical context, disease characteristics, assumptions about patient characteristics, and workflows) for MM posed challenges on the actual SDM behavior. Education and use of the DCP to create awareness of SDM were seen as possible facilitators for SDM. A prepared and active patient would facilitate the SDM process. In phase 2, three concept solutions were developed before arriving at the final solution. The final solution consisted of three elements to incorporate SDM steps in the DCP: 1) creating patient awareness and activation with two questions about their preferences prior to a consultation, 2) visualisation of preferences centrally in the DCP to trigger HCP to discuss them, 3) monitoring and improving SDM with patient-questionnaires after decision-making. Patients and HCPs were willing to implement it.
CONCLUSIONS: HCPs intention to engage in SDM was high, but their actual behaviour was challenged by the clinical environment. A 3-element DCP-based intervention was developed to increase SDM.
UNASSIGNED: Input on the solution was obtained from end-users including two patients and ten healthcare professionals.

This article discusses the current state of Advance Care Planning (ACP) in the Philippines, where the health system operates within a fragmented environment, with mixed private and public provisions. Despite some attempts to introduce legislation to foster ACP implementation, patient autonomy remains subordinate to family values and physician authority within the Southeast Asian culture. The article also highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the norms of the global healthcare force and pushed Palliative Medicine specialists to take on stronger roles in the battle lines against health-related suffering. The Palliative Care Consultants, advocates along with Philippine Society of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (PSHPM) and Hospice Philippines Inc. have been playing a significant role in promoting and supporting ACP through education and training, advocacy, research and development, networking and collaboration.

The Dutch health care system fosters a strong public health sector offering accessible generalist care including generalist palliative care. General practitioners are well positioned to conduct ACP, for example, to continue or initiate conversations after hospitalization. However, research shows that ACP conversations are often ad hoc and in frail patients, ACP is often only initiated when admitted to a nursing home by elderly care physicians who are on the staff. Tools that raise awareness of triggers to initiate ACP, screening tools, information brochures, checklists and training have been developed and implemented with funding by national programs which currently focus on implementation projects rather than or in addition to, research. The programs commonly require educational deliverables, patient and public involvement and addressing diversity in patient groups. A major challenge is how to implement ACP systematically and continuously across sectors and disciplines in a way that supports a proactive yet person-centered approach rather than an approach with an exclusive focus on medical procedures. Digital solutions can support continuity of care and communication about care plans. Solutions should fit a culture that prefers trust-based, informal deliberative approaches. This may be supported by involving disciplines other than medicine, such as nursing and spiritual caregiving, and public health approaches.

We describe the development of ACP in Switzerland during the last decade in the German- and French-speaking cantons and on the national level. In 2013, a revision of the Swiss civil law came into force, declaring advance directives (ADs) as binding. Since then, ACP has been researched and implemented primarily by universities and university hospitals. Despite the foundation of the national association \"ACP Swiss\" in 2020, several national initiatives, and a roadmap for a national implementation, many challenges and barriers still remain. There is, however, reasonable hope to implement high-quality ACP throughout Switzerland within the next ten years.

OBJECTIVE: A next step in value-based healthcare (VBHC) is to use outcome information (OI) to inform patients about (personalized) outcomes of care in order to support decision-making processes. We aimed to explore multiple myeloma (MM) patients\' and caregivers\' views on communication of OI and (shared) decision-making (SDM).
METHODS: Focus groups with MM patients and caregivers. Main topics were experiences and needs with information provision, communication, decision-making, and use of OI. Focus groups were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim and analyzed in an iterative process by two researchers using open coding. Member checks were performed.
RESULTS: Two focus groups were held with 11 patients (91% male, M=71 years old) and 10 caregivers (89% partners). Information needs were different per moment in the disease trajectory and purpose. Patients were implicitly involved in decisions, but they were not always aware of options and no active weighing of values took place. Outcome information was mostly provided on an individual level, to monitor disease progression and initiate decisions about the need for changes in ongoing treatment regimens (follow-up treatment lines). Patients appreciated the current process of information provision and decision-making, but prefer more option awareness, a bigger role in decision-making and more OI to 1) weigh outcomes for decision-making; 2) get insight in their care trajectory; and 3) compare with other patients.
CONCLUSIONS: Participants were satisfied with information provision and decision-making, but they were only implicitly involved in decisions. Real world OI derived from VBHC improvement cycles for MM may fulfil MM patients\' and caregivers\' information needs and support treatment decision-making.

Clinical practice in Brazil has rapidly transformed. Doctor-patient relationships are the focus of these transformations, either within health policies or in the context of medical training. The Brazilian Curriculum Guidelines have emphasized the doctor-patient relationship as part of medical skills and competences, based on patient-centered care. In this article, we present the political advances in patient-centered care. In addition, we address an overview of the Brazilian status quo of decision aids tools. Finally, we share experiences in curriculum reform for the advances of communication skills and the interfaces with narrative medicine and the arts in curricular medical training as a means to advance towards the practice of shared decision making.

BACKGROUND: Cancer patients are facing a variety of treatment and other disease-related decisions. This study aims to provide insights into preferred and perceived participation roles in decision-making among patients with diverse tumors using the German Cancer Information Service (CIS).
METHODS: Patients\' decision-making preferences and experiences were assessed as a part of a cross-sectional survey among CIS users. An adapted version of the Control Preferences Scale (CPS) was used to assess preferred and perceived participation roles in eight different areas of medical decision-making (e.g., choice of medication, termination of treatment). Logistic regression analyses were applied to explore preference matching and to analyze associations between participation roles and sociodemographic variables. Moreover, we examined preferences and perceptions of participation roles across different decision situations.
RESULTS: In the final sample (N = 1566, 64.9% female, mean age = 61.6), almost half of the patients (47.1%) preferred to take a collaborative role in decisions on treatment methods, whereas 36.3% preferred an active role and 15.9% a passive role. Collaborative role preferences frequently (40.7%) coincided with experiencing a passive role and predicted a reduced chance of a match between preferences and experiences (OR = 0.57, p = .001). A higher level of education was associated with a lower chance of preferring and perceiving a passive role (OR = 0.85, p < .01). Compared with men, women had increased odds of preferring (OR = 1.45, p < .05) and of actually taking (OR = 2.04, p < .001) a passive role in medical encounters. Preferred participation roles regarding treatment methods were highly correlated with preferences in all other decision areas (r > .50, p < .001) except decisions about family involvement.
CONCLUSIONS: The study reveals well-known deficits in the fulfilment of patients\' collaborative role preferences across different areas of medical decision-making in a sample of CIS users characterized by high information-seeking behavior. Participation roles were not only influenced by the patients\' level of education but also by their gender. The gender effect may be more pronounced than previous studies suggest. These effects should be considered in the development of interventions to promote shared decision-making. Additionally, study results indicate that preferences for participation in decisions about treatment methods, as assessed by the CPS, can be generalized to other areas of medical decision-making.

In Chile, local normative and guidelines place patient-centred care (PCC) as a desirable means and outcome for each level of health care. Thus, a definition of PCC is provided, and for the first time shared decision-making (SDM) is included as an intended practice. During the past five years the country has shown progress on the implementation of PCC. A large pilot study was conducted in one of the Metropolitan Health Services, and now the health authority is committed to escalate a PCC strategy nationwide. From the practice domain, most of the work is being placed on the training of health professionals. Patients\' preparation for the clinical encounter is scarce, thereby limiting their potential to participate in their care. At the research domain, the country shows a strengthened agenda that has advanced from a diagnostic phase (including the exploration from social sciences) to a purposeful stage which involves the development of training programs, patient decision aids, international collaborations, and other PCC interventions. The country is now positioned to secure new initiatives to empower patients and allow them to take an active role, as a key component of PCC and SDM.

In Norway, shared decision-making (SDM) is on the top of the priorities announced by the health authorities. Accountability for implementing this priority has been delegated to the four health regions, and from there into particular departments, hospital trusts, working groups or SDM coordinators. Using abundant public funding, different approaches to producing and implementing patient decision aids have been developed. However, none of these is implemented by any Norwegian services on a regular basis, while the accessible decision aids on the national health platform are not quality approved and in very little use. An ongoing new project is aimed to resolve this dilemma. Health professional training has been developed as a meta-curriculum with multiple modules, adaptive to setting and user group, and designed as an open-source learning platform, based upon the experience of \"SDM Ambassadors\" delivering the training. Most of the modules are already implemented on a regular basis in the South-Eastern Health Region, and 5000 health care professionals have already graduated from the training modules. However, in the standard patient pathways, and in most of the national medical guidelines, the patient is still considered to be a passive receiver of directives or recommendations, rather than an active participant in their own health decisions. Considerable structural implementation has been done in the education guidelines of all health professions on all levels to embed SDM principles. Teaching in SDM skills, quality of information and evidence-based nursing has become standard in most of the programs at Norwegian universities. Nevertheless, we currently still have no reliable estimate on the degree to which patients are actually involved in their own health decision-making. Further efforts in the process of implementing the patient\'s choice in the health system should involve the municipal services, follow a research-based strategy, include monitoring and consider the quality level of the informational environment of health-related decisions.

In Hungary, the National Health Insurance Fund provides health care coverage for nearly all residents, but healthcare spending is below the EU\'s average (6.4% versus 9.9% of the GDP in 2019, respectively). In 1997, patients\' rights were established by laws of the healthcare system. The patients\' voice, however, has remained weakly embedded in decision-making processes both on the system and individual patient levels. Policy progress achieved in the past years may foster patient-centeredness in health policy decision-making. However, people-reported data are not yet embedded in the Hungarian health information system and national population or household surveys, thus undermining the monitoring of the performance of the health system regarding patient-centred aspects. From the academic research side, several advances have occurred regarding the availability of validated instruments for the measurement of patient-centred aspects. These recent studies have placed Hungary in a uniquely advanced position compared with other countries in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. The use of those instruments in clinical guidelines and practices, to the education curricula of future health workers, is still in an early stage.