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Development Toolkit

The development toolkit is a set of resources for people who would like to develop patient decision aids using the Ottawa approach. The Ottawa approach is based on the Ottawa Decision Support Framework and meets the minimal criteria for the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS). We encourage you to use the following:

  1. Review examples of patient decision aids using the Ottawa Approach
  2. Use the Ottawa Patient Decision Aid Development eTraining (ODAT): an online, self-guided tutorial that takes people through the Ottawa Approach for patient decision aid development. Within the tutorial, templates are provided. Our patient decision aids are designed to help prepare people to discuss their options with healthcare professionals. Typically, our patient decision aids:
    • Clearly state the decision;
    • Provide information on the health condition, options, benefits, and harms/side effects using the best available scientific evidence;
    • If probabilities of outcomes are included, present them using pictograms that show what happens to 100 or 1000 people like them;
    • Clarify personal values or importance of the benefits or harms/side effects using a values clarification exercise;
    • Assess unresolved decisional needs using the 4-item SURE test version of the Decisional Conflict Scale and assess knowledge of the options;
    • Ask for a preferred option.
  3. Learn about the new expedited approach used during COVID-19 pandemic.
    Stacey D, Ludwig C, Archambault P, Babulic K, Edwards N, Lavoie J, Sinha S, O’Connor AM (2021). Feasibility of rapidly developing and widely disseminating patient decision aids to respond to urgent decisional needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical Decision Making. 41(2), 233-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X20979693
  4. Check to make sure your patient decision aid meets the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS). These are internationally approved criteria for determining the quality of patient decision aids.
  5. Enter your patient decision aid in the Decision Aid Library Inventory (DALI) system to have them added into the A to Z inventory. DALI is available for all patient decision aids even if they were not developed following the Ottawa Approach.
  6. Report the patient decision aid development and evaluation following the SUNDAE Reporting Guidelines (Standards for Universal reporting of patient Decision Aid Evaluation studies). These guidelines are available on the EQUATOR reporting guidelines website.
  7. To learn more about the evidence from studies evaluating patient decision aids and outcomes used, our research group leads an international group of researchers in regularly updating the Cochrane systematic review of patient decision aids for health treatment or screening decisions.

References for select Ottawa Patient Decision Aids

Last modified: 2024-03-04.