Effectiveness of interventions to enhance shared decision-making in wound care: A systematic review.

AIMS: To explore the effectiveness of interventions to enhance patient participation in shared decision-making in wound care and tissue viability.

BACKGROUND: Caring for people living with a wound is complex due to interaction between wound healing, symptoms, psychological wellbeing and treatment effectiveness. To respond to this complexity, there has been recent emphasis on the importance of delivering patient centred wound care and shared decision-making to personalise health care. However, little is known about the effectiveness of existing interventions to support shared decision-making in wound care.

DESIGN: Systematic review of interventional studies to enhance shared decision-making in wound care or tissue viability. This was reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines 2020.

METHODS: Interventional primary research studies published in English up to January 2023 were included. Screening, data extraction and quality appraisal were undertaken independently by two authors.

DATA SOURCES: Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trails (trials database), CINAHL, British Nursing Index (BNI), WorldCat (thesis database), Scopus and registries of ongoing studies (ISRCTN registry and clinicaltrials.gov).

RESULTS: 1063 abstracts were screened, and eight full-text studies included. Findings indicate, interventions to support shared decision-making are positively received. Goal or need setting components may assist knowledge transfer between patient and clinician, and could lower short term decisional conflict. However, generally findings within this study had very low certainty due to the inconsistencies in outcomes reported, and the variation and complexity of single and multiple interventions used.

CONCLUSIONS: Future research on shared decision-making interventions in wound care should include the involvement of stakeholders and programme theory to underpin the interventions developed to consider the complexity of interventions.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION AND PATIENT CARE: Patients setting out their needs or goals and exploring patient questions are important and should be considered in clinical care.

REGISTRATION: The review protocol was prospectively registered (PROSPERO database: CRD42023389820).

NO PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Not applicable as this is a systematic review.