Communicating with physicians about medical decisions: a reluctance to disagree.

Effective patient-physician communication is essential for shared decision making, considered by some to be the “pinnacle” of patient-centered care. Many health care decisions have multiple options and no correct choice. These are called preference-sensitive decisions, and the optimal decision is one that takes into account patient preferences and values in a collaborative process with the physician, known as shared decision making.

We sought to describe patients’ intentions to engage in shared decision making communication behaviors in response to a hypothetical preference-sensitive clinical scenario and to examine the effects of underlying patient beliefs on these behaviors.