Collaborative decision-making

Abstract

The ability to collaborate effectively in contemporary interprofessional healthcare teams is a core aspect of modern professional practice. Communication skills, teamwork abilities and understanding other team members' professional roles and responsibilities are key factors that form the basis of being able to participate actively and thoughtfully in CDM processes. Having to make choices and decisions in dynamic and complex healthcare systems is a significant cognitive challenge. When confronted with uncertainty in rapidly changing situations in a dynamic healthcare environment, health professionals are vulnerable to making errors of judgement, which can lead to patient harm. A new model of CDM in healthcare has emerged as a synthesis of current best practice models in shared decision-making and interprofessional practice. The CDM model enables richer decision-making processes for complex patient care to achieve optimal health outcomes in dynamic health systems.