Society for Medical Decision Making

Clinician Cross-Talk Sessions

18 June 2025, 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM (local time)

Bridging Decision Science & Clinical Guidelines for Better Patient Care

Ahmed Bayoumi, MD, MSc, FRCPC, FCAHS
Cynthia Chude, MD, PhD
Amy Cizik, PhD, MPH
Dale Steele, MD, MS

This panel discussion explores the potential for decision science to have a transformative impact on the development and implementation of clinical guidelines. By leveraging advanced methods such as constrained optimization, cost-effectiveness analysis, clinical prediction modeling, and the thoughtful integration of both patient and clinician preferences.

Over the course of the 75-minute session, our expert panel will present real-world case studies that address the opportunities and challenges of incorporating decision science to optimize clinical guidelines. This interactive format is designed to foster dialogue, encouraging participants to engage with the panel on innovative approaches and offer solutions that will integrate these disciplines into clinical practice.

Shared Decision Making in Action: Real-World Cases and Challenges #SDMIRL

Crystal Chu, MD, PhD
Ellen Lipstein, MD, MPH
Semra Ozdemir, PhD
Peter Schwartz, MD, PhD
Kristina Suorsa-Johnson, PhD
Haoyang Yan, PhD

Panelists will explore three to four clinical cases from adult and pediatric care where shared decision making (SDM) could be applied, illustrating how SDM unfolds in different clinical scenarios and examining situations where it may not be the best fit. The discussion will highlight real-world nuances and challenges in integrating SDM into practice. This interactive session will actively engage conference attendees, incorporating their ideas, questions, and concerns throughout the session.

18 June 2025, 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM (local time)

Why bother developing or using a clinical decision tool? Dilemmas and Opportunities

Stijntje Dijk, MD, MSc
Meredith MacMartin, MD, MS, FAAHPM
Christina Penfield, MD, PhD
Michael Rubyan, PhD, MPH
Alexis Steinberg, MD, MS

Healthcare professionals are engaged in medical decision making everyday but face many barriers to doing it well. Time constraints, knowledge gaps, and rapidly changing best available evidence impede the quality of decision making and clinical care. Decision scientists are devoted to facilitating medical decision making and have produced thousands of tools designed to do just that. Yet very few of them are used in clinical practice. Are clinicians reluctant to receive help with their work? Or are researchers missing the mark altogether with the tools they are putting out?

In this highly interactive session jointly hosted by clinical and non-clinical decision scientists, we will explore the challenges of supporting medical decision making in “real world” practice. We will discuss case examples from our own professional lives in which decision tools fell short of clinical needs and where clinicians could have been involved in their design. Together, we will explore what decisions clinicians want help with, what decisions they need help with (but might not want to admit), and how can researchers create and implement tools that will improve patient care that don’t end up collecting dust on the shelf.

“A doctor, patient, and guideline committee walk into an exam room…”: on the interplay between evidence-based medicine, guidelines, and shared decision making

Katie Baughman, MD, MA
Cara Janusz, PhD
Joshua Rager, MD, MA, MS
Greg Sacks, MD, MPH, PhD
Daniel Wiener, MD

In this session, discussants will use current examples from diverse medical specialties (adult primary care, pediatrics/neonatology, and surgery) to explore and engage participants in a discussion on the sometimes conflicting, sometimes synergistic relationship between clinical practice guidelines, the evidence that underlies those guidelines, and shared decision making.

Sponsored for CME Credit by UAB Division of CME

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of the University of Alabama Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine (UASOM) and the Society for Medical Decision Making. The UASOM is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The University of Alabama Heersink School of Medicine designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 15 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

UAB is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Institute.