Toma de decisiones compartidas en la atención de pacientes con diabetes mellitus: Un desafío para Latinoamérica

Patients with diabetes mellitus often have several medical problems and carry a burden imposed by their illness and treatment. Health care often ignores the values, preferences and context of patients, leading to treatments that do not fit into patients’ overwhelmed lives. Shared Decision Making (SDM) emerges as a way to answer the question: “What’s best for the patient?”. SDM promotes an empathic conversation between patients and clinicians that integrates the best evidence available with their values, preferences and context. We discuss three SDM approaches for patients with diabetes: one focused on sharing information, another on making choices, and a third one on helping patients and clinicians to talk about how to address the problems of living with diabetes and its comorbidities. Despite the benefits demonstrated in studies conducted in the U.S. and Europe, the implementation of SDM continues to be a challenge. In Latin America, healthcare and socio-economic conditions render the implementation of SDM more challenging. Research aimed to respond to this challenge is necessary. Meanwhile, clinicians can practice SDM by sharing evidence-based information, giving voice to patients’ values and preferences in making choices, and creating empathic conversations aimed at decisions aligned with patients’ context, dreams, goals, and life expectations.