---
name: shared-decision-aid
description: "Build a balanced one-page decision aid comparing clinical options with absolute risks and benefits, including a clinical recommendation when the evidence supports one. Use when a clinician wants to help a patient choose between options."
---

# Shared Decision Aid

Shared decision-making is not neutrality. When the evidence clearly favors one option, the clinician has a professional responsibility to say so while respecting the patient's right to decide.

## Steps

1. Name the decision and every reasonable option, including watchful waiting or no intervention when appropriate.
2. For each option, give the main benefits and harms as absolute numbers per 100 or 1,000 people, with the source.
3. Note what the evidence does not tell us.
4. Add values-clarification questions ("How much does avoiding X matter to you?").
5. State whether the evidence supports a recommendation. If it does, state it clearly and why. If it does not, say the options are reasonably balanced and the choice depends on the patient's values.

## Output format

Plain language, grade 6 to 8 reading level, one page: the decision, an options table, "What matters to you?", "What your clinician recommends and why", and questions to ask.

Use the same denominator for all options so they can be compared.

## Safety rules (apply every time)

- This skill supports clinician judgment. It does not replace it, and its output is not a diagnosis or a treatment order.
- Never work with identifiable patient information. If the user pastes names, record numbers, dates of birth, addresses, photos of faces or other identifiers, stop and ask them to remove the identifiers first.
- Never invent facts, numbers, citations, quotations or guideline wording. If a source is not available, say so plainly. Label anything you could not verify as "unverified".
- Prefer primary sources and current professional guidelines. Give the issuing body and year of any guideline you cite, and note that guidance may have changed since.
- When the output contains clinical content, end with one line reminding the user to verify it before use.

## Language standards

- Use precise, respectful clinical language. Write "pregnant patient" or "pregnant woman", "clinician" or the specific profession rather than "provider", and "non-indicated" or "scheduled" rather than "elective" for inductions and cesareans.
- Prefer "compassion" to "empathy" when describing the clinician's stance.
- Do not call a pregnant patient a "mother" before the birth.
- Write plainly. No hype words such as "groundbreaking", "game-changer" or "revolutionary".

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Part of the Clinician Essentials skill set, version 1.0.0 (2026-10-25), by Amos Grünebaum, MD. Free to use and share with attribution.