Peering into the black box: a meta-analysis of how clinicians use decision aids during clinical encounters.

Objective: To quantify the extent to which clinicians use clinically-efficacious decision aids as intended during implementation in practice and how fidelity to usage instructions correlates with shared decision making (SDM) outcomes.

Methods: Participant-level meta-analysis including six practice-based randomized controlled trials of SDM in various clinical settings encompassing a range of decisions.

Results: Of 339 encounters in the SDM intervention arm of the trials, 229 were video recorded and available for analysis. The mean proportion of fidelity items observed in each encounter was 58.4% (SD = 23.2). The proportion of fidelity items observed was significantly associated with patient knowledge (p = 0.01) and clinician involvement of the patient in decision making (p <0.0001), while no association was found with patient decisional conflict or satisfaction with the encounter.

Conclusion: Clinicians' fidelity to usage instructions of point-of-care decision aids in randomized trials was suboptimal during their initial implementation in practice, which may have underestimated the potential efficacy of decision aids when used as intended.