Professional competencies
But research also suggests that professional education and training needs to equip clinicians with additional 'patient-professional partnership' skills and competencies so that patients can engage - as much as they wish to - in decisions about their care and treatment.
Communication skills
Communication skills training for professionals:
- increases the effectiveness of patient information and education activities
- increases patient engagement in care and treatment
- improves patients' satisfaction with / experience of care
- decreases patient anxiety.
Medical and nursing education increasingly includes communication skills training, and patient experience data regarding clinicians' communication skills in England show that things are improving. Yet there has been no real improvement in engagement in decision-making - 
longitudinal survey data still show a substantial proportion of patients reporting that they would have liked to be more involved in treatment decisions.
Medical training
As part of its Patient-centred Professionalism research programme, Picker Institute Europe reviewed medical training in the UK. The 2006 study Education for Partnership asked two key questions:
- to what extent are doctors currently being trained to work in partnership with patients?
- what else could be done to ensure that doctors help patients play a more active role in their healthcare?
The research found that partnership competencies for doctors include:
- knowing how to guide patients to appropriate sources of information on health and healthcare
- providing effective education on health protection and disease prevention
- being able to communicate information on risk and probability in a clear, comprehensible manner
- determining patients' role preferences and, where appropriate, involving them in treatment decisions
- providing support for self-care and self-management of chronic conditions.
The Education for Partnership interviews and literature review identified four principal areas where progress has been made:
- statements of principle
- new curricula
- teaching and learning methods
- assessment methods.
The report examines each of these in detail, looks at available evidence about 'what works' and barriers to change, and includes recommendations for translating patient-professional partnership from policy to practice.