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Comment & Response
November 2015

Decision Making About Treatment for Advanced Cancer—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1Management Department, Columbia University, New York, New York
  • 2Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
  • 3Psychology Department, Columbia University, New York, New York
JAMA Oncol. 2015;1(8):1169-1170. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.3118

In Reply Shared decision making (SDM) is a crucial ideal toward which clinicians must strive. We agree with Henselmans and colleagues that in order to optimally advise patients, physicians should master each component of SDM, including announcing that a decision needs to be made based on the patients’ preferences, providing balanced information about the options, jointly constructing patients’ preferences, and making a decision that matches these preferences. It often remains unclear, however, which communication skills best help physicians use SDM efficiently in their practice.

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