We have an excellent track record for engaging patients and carers – collectively and individually – to co-design improvements to patient pathways, decision-making processes, and the information that patients and carers receive at each stage.

We are confident that we can bring about the necessary cultural shift to embed shared decision making across all ICS/STP activity – improving people’s quality of life by enabling patients and healthcare professionals to come together as equals and share their respective expertise in order to make better treatment decisions.

We know that shared decision making – and giving patients more of a say in determining the outcomes that are important to them – can lead to greater satisfaction with care, more confidence in decisions, and improved adherence to treatment.

We select robust patient decision aids, including our own, or support shared decisions against relevant pathways, such as those included in NICE Evidence, making them available in accessible formats; and drawing on the learning from the NHS RightCare programme.

We always ensure that our approach to implementation of shared decision-making models is firmly grounded in the evolving research, bringing together the latest legislation, policy and evidence.

Our understanding of the evidence base, expertise in delivering cultural change and insistence on using the best available tools and methods, ensures that we deliver a co-ordinated, whole system approach to embedding shared decision making in relevant pathways across an ICS/STP.

Our early adoption of health technologies and our innovative work in developing and evaluating more personalised patient engagement make us well placed to share our expertise.

Our work on a new service specification for ophthalmology services in Staffordshire is a good example of how we have changed clinical practice through engagement. It drew on shared decision making principles and involved patients, consultants, optometrists, and primary care and community clinicians. The revised clinical pathway has, to date, reduced.