Application-Enabled Shared Decision-Making

Female breast is an amazing organ that it symbolizes not only the female gender, but also the continuity of human race. In the past treating breast cancer may signal a termination of the breast's predestined role in a woman or a mother. Nowadays, surgical treatment of early breast cancer has two options, one is breast-conserving surgery and the other one is total mastectomy. The former treatment option preserves most of the breast tissue but may spare dormant cancer cells in the preserved tissue. The latter treatment option spares no breast tissue and as a result no dormant cancer cells would remain. This treatment dilemma may bother most of the patients especially when they are still under the shade of the bad news. Many women are reluctant to discuss their diseased breasts with their folks or even their doctors because of privacy; instead they would seek information through internet. Unfortunately, most of their final decision is doctor's preferred choice despite they may have doubts or concerns on doctor's choice of treatment.

Share decision making (SDM) is a recently developed strategy that allows patients taking part in their treatment plan. Patients are invited to join the meeting where doctors explain the latest treatment options and patients express their concerns and finally a decision, both doctors' and patients' concerns well integrated, is reached. One of the drawbacks of SDM is too time consuming; doctors have to prepare a lot of pertinent information, while patients have to try their best to understand the provided information, though many patients may not fully understand their treatment options. It has been reported that a well designed patient decision aids (PDAs) could serve as a virtue connection between patients and doctors. Instead of merely taking information from the PDAs, it allows patients to know all the possible options of treatment and the side effects in an interactive way. It is supposed that patients could be well prepared to discuss with their doctors after interaction with the customized PDAs. In Taiwan, decision conflict and decision regret are commonly encountered among most cancer patients. The impetus for developing a PDAs for female breast cancer patients and evaluating its role on lowering decision conflict and decision regret among these patients comes from the high rates of decision conflict and decision regret among cancer patients in Taiwan.