Integrating Patient Values into Evidence-Based Practice: Effective Communication for Shared Decision-Making

Increasing data suggest that the traditional clinician-centered or disease-focused, biomedical approach to illness is less effective than a biopsychosocial, evidence-based, patient-centered approach to illness, particularly for chronic pain conditions. This article distinguishes patient-centered care from more traditional and outdated biomedical decisionmaking models; illustrates the complexity of illness behavior with a patient example; delves into the communication issues raised by this complexity, thereby demonstrating how best evidence can sometimes run counter to biases and intuition; provides a summary of evidence that patient-centered care positively affects outcomes; and explores how the shared decision-making approach along with cultivation of good communication skills can facilitate evidence-based practice.