title: What matters to users of services? An explorative study to promote shared decision making in health care.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Involving service users and carers in decisions about their health care is a key feature of health-care practice. Professional health and social care students need to develop skills and attributes to best enable this to happen.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aims were to explore service user and carer perceptions of behaviours, attributes and context required to enable shared decision making; to compare these perceptions to those of students and academic staff with a view to utilizing the findings to inform the development of student assessment tools.
  
  
  METHODS
  A mixed methods approach was used including action learning groups (ALG) and an iterative process alongside a modified Delphi survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  The ALGs were from an existing service user and carer network. The survey was sent to sixty students, sixty academics and 30 service users from 16 different professional disciplines, spanning four Universities in England.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The collaborative enquiry process and survey identified general agreement that being open and honest, listening, showing respect, giving time and being up to date were important. The qualitative findings identified that individual interpretation was a key factor. An unexpected result was an insight into possible insecurities of students.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings indicate that distilling rich qualitative information into a format for student assessment tools could be problematic as the individual context could be lost, it is therefore proposed that the information could be better used as a learning rather than assessment tool. Several of those involved identified how they valued the process and found it beneficial.
authors.affiliation: Head of Division, University of HuddersfieldHead of Undergraduate Nursing/Senior Lecturer, Child Nursing, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, EnglandPatient Voice Group, West Yorkshire Service User and Carer Collaborative, Hosted by Leeds University, LeedsSoon to be appointed Education Lead, Professional support Unit, London Deanery, London, EnglandHead of School of Health and Community Studies, Leeds Metropolitan UniversityPatient and Public Involvement Manager, Leeds Institute of Medical Education,\ Leeds University, Leeds, England.
authors.forename: Kath
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Padgett
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rhodes
authors.forename: Maureen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lumb
authors.forename: Penny
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.forename: Sue
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sherwin
authors.forename: Jools
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Symons
authors.forename: Joannie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tate
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Townend
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D003697:Delphi Technique; D004739:England; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D010358:Patient Participation; D057240:Patient Preference / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires