King's College London

Shared decision making is a cornerstone of patient-centred clinical practice. It means that the patient’s perspectives and concerns contribute as much to decisions about their treatment as the expert opinions of the clinician.

The NHS STOMP campaign (Stopping OverMedication of People with Learning Disabilities, Autism or Both) says that people with learning disabilities and their carers should be involved in shared decision making about taking mental health medications. However, we know that clinicians can struggle to meet the communication support needs of people with learning disabilities to engage them in shared decision making.

We want to see how STOMP goals are working out in real life by examining video-recordings of conversations about mental health medicines between mental health doctors and their patients in learning disability settings. We will use a method called conversation analysis to understand the dynamics of these conversations and see what is working well and what gets in the way of shared decision making.

We will present our findings with patients, clinicians and communication experts and collaborate with them in co-design groups to produce ideas about how to support clinicians, patients and carers to use shared decision making more effectively.