In clinical practice, patients, families, and healthcare professionals continually face situations in which they must make decisions with varying levels of uncertainty, whether in relation to diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.
Shared decision-making allows both the professional and the patient to participate jointly in health decisions, after considering the range of available options. Joint assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of every alternative takes into account the individual characteristics, values, preferences, circumstances of each person. This model favors a more active role by the patient in the disease process and marks a change in the relationship between the patient and healthcare workers.
The research discussed on the ICTUSnet workshop attempts to analyze at what stage the Shared Clinical Decision-Making model is found within the stroke care process in the community of Navarre, assessing current limitations or tools needed to establish it. It also seeks to provide a space for reflection to identify unmet needs or suggest possible improvements in the different stages of the integrated stroke care process. The full report is available here.
This work was carried out jointly between the Neurology Service of the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarre (CHN), Navarrabiomed (Biomedical Research Centre of the Government of Navarre), and the Navarre Brain Damage Association (ADACEN), a non-profit organization that works with patients and family members. This initiative is linked to the ICTUSnet project, whose mission is to create a collaborative network between different southern European regions, made up of patients and professionals from different areas related to stroke care.