A Qualitative Study on the Experiences of Specialists on Patient-Oriented Decision Making in a Developing Country

Patient centered decision making is one of the main aspects of evidence –based medicine, in addition to being morally important. The aim of this study was to extract the experiences of clinicians on patient-centered decision making. A qualitative study based on descriptive phenomenology method was done. Purposive sampling was used to select the clinicians from among faculty members of medical school. Focus Group Discussion (FGD) was used to gather the data. The discussion continued till the saturation of data was achieved. Content analysis was used for data analysis. The participants of FGD were 6 clinicians from various specialties. 218 codes were extracted from the data and they were categorized in 4 themes and 16 subthemes. The main themes were: good relationship with patients, respect to the opinions and beliefs of the patients, taking into account the needs, preferences and experiences of the patients, comfort and safety of outpatient and inpatient setting for patient, shared decision making. Patient centeredness based on the experiences of clinicians in an educational hospital is similar to other studies but in developing countries like Iran clinicians have contextual and cultural barriers to apply it.