Quality of patient decision aids to support the public making COVID-19 decisions: An online environmental scan.
Alda Kiss, Qian Zhang, Meg Carley and 4 others
PMID 37244134WHAT IT FOUND
Only 12 publicly available COVID-19 patient decision aids were found.
Most were understandable, but none were actionable enough to guide users through next steps, and criteria to reduce biased decisions were often missing.
Key findings
01Only 12 publicly available COVID-19 patient decision aids were identified, and none covered testing or treatment decisions.
0211 of 12 aids were rated understandable, but none were rated actionable; median actionability was 45.0%.
03The median score for criteria to reduce biased decisions was 4 of 6, and the least met criteria were update policy and funding sources.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The search used English terms only, so decision aids in other languages were likely missed. The scan reviewed only the first 50 Google results and stopped when later results were irrelevant, so some resources may have been missed. It appraised publicly available resources, not tested patient outcomes, so it does not show whether any aid improved decisions. Only 12 aids were included, and the pandemic and evidence base were changing rapidly. IPDAS quality appraisal did not define a minimum score for adequate quality.
Declared interests
The study was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research project grant, and the funding agreement said authors were independent in design, interpretation, writing, and publication. The authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat these aids as proven decision-support tools for patients. The scan appraised publicly available resources; it did not test whether patients made better decisions, and none met the actionability threshold.