Creating the Safety and Respect Necessary for “Shared” Decision-making

Abstract

Beyond the rhetoric of bioethics, patients and families need help facing tragic diagnoses and prognoses and coping with traumatic treatment options. In this article, I will draw from developmental psychology, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and bioethics to show what we are still missing about shared decision-making and how we can do better. Before we bring in new models of shared decision-making we need to ensure that doctors know how to create the foundational conditions for safe emotional communication. For pediatricians, this requires knowing enough about how adolescents process cognitive, affective and sensory information to avoid traumatizing their patients, knowing enough about the doctor’s own fears not to project them onto the patient, and providing the supportive others that help the teenager tolerate and process information that is otherwise intolerable. To fail to do so can lead to tragic outcomes.