Do more ‘risk literate’ GPs apply better Shared Decision Making?

Background Barriers to Shared Decision Making (SDM) are well described. One of those barriers for healthcare providers is the perception of a lack of latitude in the choice of treatment in certain clinical situations (1). We know that clinicians’ expectations of the benefits and harms of medical interventions are often inaccurate. Like patients, clinicians generally overestimate the benefits and underestimate the harms (2). This lack of “risk literacy” (3,4) among clinicians could contribute to creating a false sense of "necessity to intervene" which, besides contributing to the trend of over-medicalization, could infringe on the place left to SDM.