Patients' Decision Making Preferences and Perceived Participation in Care: A Case Study in Selected Educational Hospitals of Yazd

Background: Patient's preferences in decision-making procedure are defined as the patient's willingness to participate in self-care management and decision-making. The aim of present study was to assess patients' preferences in decision-making procedure and perceived participation in care and their relationship with demographic in selected educational hospitals of Yazd in 2019. Methods: The study was conducted on 195 inpatients of the gynecology, internal medicine and surgery wards of teaching hospitals in Yazd of Iran. The inpatients were selected through stratified sampling method. The data was collected by 2 questionnaires: Degner and Sloan's control preferences scale and patients' perceived involvement in care scale of Lerman et al. parametric and non-parametric tests used to analyze the data. Results: In general, 49.20 % of patients preferred a relatively passive role in the decision-making process, and 36.40 % of them had high level of willingness to participate in their medical care decisions. The difference between the types of patients 'decision-making preferences was significant for education level, type of hospital and type of inpatient ward, type of basic insurance (p ≤ 0.05). The mean score of Patients' perceived participation was 62.08 ± 14.92. The difference observed in the mean score of patients' perceived participation in care for gender, type of disease, type of hospital, history of hospitalization, type of basic insurance was significant (p < 0.05). Conclusion: A large percentage of patients in the present study preferred a relatively passive role in decision-making, so it is best for health care providers to provide patients with understandable information about available treatment options and the benefits / risks associated with those choices. Also, the necessary interventions to promote shared decision-making, especially to help female patients and patients with more acute illnesses, as well as to support health care providers to participate in the shared decision-making process with patients, are of particular importance.