Table 2 Representative quotes: patient centred SDM practices (Focus groups 2 and 4)

2:1 At one end you've got doctors making decisions not giving patients any information or choice and at the other end you've got consumerism, essentially you just give them the choice and the price and all the other bits and pieces and they choose and shared decision making is some sort of negotiated pathway that involves both the doctors and the patients knowledge, opinions, experience. (GP2 – Male – FG2)

2:2 Its about empowerment...definitely empowerment... decision making ultimately impacts upon them. (Health Visitor – Female – FG4)

2:3 Information implies that decision making is relatively rationale where as of course most people make decisions probably on relatively irrational basis so it's actually acknowledging that, understanding that. (GP1 – Male – FG2)

2:4 We have communication skills regularly training with an outside trainer and its [SDM] one of the areas we've looked at. (GP2 – Female – FG2)

2:5 I went to a presentation by Glyn Elwyn who has done a lot on shared decision making and he went through some of the more sophisticated computer based tools. (GP2 – Male – FG2)

2:6 I've recorded it on the screen, you know. We came to a shared decision that it was appropriate not to have the medication. (GP2 – Female – FG2)

2:7 It seems an odd idea that we weren't doing it before, like somehow it's a new thing that wasn't going on before. (GP2 – Female – FG4)

2:8 ...you took the decision for them last time [but] they go away, they take a separate decision. (GP1 – Female – FG4)