title: Shared decision-making in the Netherlands--current state and future perspectives.
abstract: Dutch government policy is aimed at introducing regulated competition among health care providers and among health care insurers and at empowering patients for being involved in decision-making in health care. Along with this, many Dutch organisations have been created to foster patient orientation within health care and increase patients' power for medical decision-making. The challenge is to deliver reliable and well-balanced information for patients and the public, eg. in patient-tailored web-based formats. The approach of patient participation in medical decision-making has been formally defined in a specific law (WGBO), and the principle of recognising the patient's view is increasingly reflected in the national guidelines for health care professionals. The theme of patient participation in medical decision making is a fairly widespread research topic theme in the Netherlands, including mutual exchange among the researchers in a vivid network. The real bottleneck is perhaps the implementation of patient participation into professional practice. Some recommendations for facilitating a change are made.
authors.affiliation: Department General Practice, Centre for Quality of Care Research, Care and Public Health Research Institute, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Trudy.vanderWeijden@HAG.unimaas.nl
authors.forename: Trudy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: van der Weijden
authors.forename: Haske
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: van Veenendaal
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Timmermans
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000639:trends; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care