Nurse-led coaching of shared decision-making for wound treatment of pressure injury: A pilot study of a randomized trial.

Objectives: International guidelines for managing pressure injury (PI) and ulcers recommend that family members and caregivers should be involved in making decisions for appropriate wound care. However, the effect of shared decision-making (SDM) in the context of PI remains unknown. This study investigated the efficacy of nurse-led medical SDM for PI treatment.

Materials and methods: We constructed a patient decision aid (PDA) for PI treatment on the basis of nursing evidence. Subsequently, we conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of SDM compared with that of usual care (control group, [CG]) for PI treatment. Participants with stage 3, stage 4, or unstageable PI were included and randomized into two groups. In the SDM group (SDMG), 10 participants received the SDM intervention for PI before treatment. All participants were followed up for 4 weeks. Primary outcomes were measured using the nine-item SDM Questionnaire (SDM-Q-9) and Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS). Secondary outcomes included wound size and cost of wound management.

Results: The expert validity (medical professors and general population) of the PDA designed for PI was measured, and the content validity index was 0.96-0.97. A total of 20 participants were enrolled (10 received SDM and 10 received usual care). The mean age of the participants was 55.7 ± 8.8 years. No significant difference in baseline characteristics (sex, age, staging, or wound area) was observed between the two groups. The SDMG had higher SDM-Q-9 (P < 0.001) and DCS (P < 0.01) scores than did the CG. For the secondary outcomes, the SDMG had a decreased change of wound size and lower wound management costs than did the CG; nevertheless, the differences were not statistically significant.

Conclusion: We constructed a PDA for PI treatment, which can be applied in clinical care. The pilot test results revealed that the participants had a lower cost related wound treatment and decreasing wound size in SDMG than CG after the intervention of SDM-PI for 4 weeks. In the future, clinical studies should conduct large-scale randomized trials based on the results of this pilot study.