Episode Details

Prof. C. Heesen explains what it needs to have shared decision making in MS and where there are the pros and cons, options and limitations.

You can find the transcript of the interview on my blog to read it: https://ms-perspektive.com/044-shared-decision-making

Today's interview is about the topic of shared decision making in the treatment of MS. What requirements must be met to enable shared decision making? How intensively is it already being practiced? What are the advantages and disadvantages of patients deciding together with their neurologist how their personal MS should be treated? I talk about this with Prof. Christoph Heesen, who is passionate about this topic and has already developed a number of information services for the German-speaking patient community to enable patients to make informed decisions.

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• Introduction – Who is Prof. Dr. Christoph Heesen?
• Shared Decision Making Principles
• Implementation and Challenges of Shared Decision Making (SDM)
• Practical Aspects and Examples
• Extended Aspects of SDM
• Farewell

Introduction – Who is Prof. Dr. Christoph Heesen?

Prof. Christoph Heesen is a Senior physician, Head of the MS-Center and Neurologist at the Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg in Germany. He was already couple of times my guest for the German MS-Perspektive podcast. We talked about stem cell therapy and for whom this treatment is a good option. Another interview concentrated on German patient information tools, established by his team that help to provide patients with information around treatment choices. The platforms include statements from patients that are positive, neutral and negative on certain options to make it balanced.

How and where can interested people find more information on shared decision making in MS or even more generic in medical treatment?

Prof. Christoph Heesen: We have the International Society of Shared Decision-Making. She has a website and a conference every two years, I think. The next will be in Switzerland, if I'm informed right. In terms of disease specific, it depends a lot from of course, a given country and the language. To be honest, I'm not aware that on international grounds, there's really a shared decision making portal for MS patients, who is really working with this concept.

Of course, we have more or less advanced websites, for example, from the UK MS Society, which in general, a lot has this att