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Background: Choosing Wisely Canada is a campaign that fosters conversations between physicians and patients about high-value health care. However, little is known about physicians’ readiness to have these conversations. Our objective was to determine how ready practising internists were to embrace and openly address high-value care during conversations with patients or their families. Methods: Practising internists in hospitals affiliated with McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, were invited to complete an electronic survey with 3 clinical scenarios: each had 3 low-value interventions that had been requested by the patient or family member. For each request, participants chose 1 of 3 statements reflecting how they would respond: a low-value statement agreeing to provide the intervention, an implicit high-value statement declining to provide the intervention without mentioning value or an explicit high-value statement declining to provide the intervention with mention of value. Results: Forty-four of 62 eligible physicians (71.0% response rate) participated in the survey. High-value statements were selected in 91% of cases. The implicit high-value statement was chosen more often than the explicit high-value statement (65.7% v. 25.5% of all responses, respectively; χ2 range 4.46–56.23, p < 0.05). Interpretation: Physicians favoured high-value care but frequently chose not to explicitly address value in their statements. Physicians seemed ready to embrace high-value health care practice, although they were not ready to openly discuss it with patients and their families.

Objective Advance care planning (ACP) can result in end-of-life care that is more congruent with patients’ values and preferences. There is increasing interest in video decision aids to assist with ACP. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of video decision aids on patients’ preferences regarding life-sustaining treatments (primary outcome). Design Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Data sources MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycInfo, CINAHL, AMED and CENTRAL, between 1980 and February 2014, and correspondence with authors. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Randomised controlled trials of adult patients that compared a video decision aid to a non-video-based intervention to assist with choices about use of life-sustaining treatments and reported at least one ACP-related outcome. Data extraction Reviewers worked independently and in pairs to screen potentially eligible articles, and to extract data regarding risk of bias, population, intervention, comparator and outcomes. Reviewers assessed quality of evidence (confidence in effect estimates) for each outcome using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework. Results 10 trials enrolling 2220 patients were included. Low-quality evidence suggests that patients who use a video decision aid are less likely to indicate a preference for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (pooled risk ratio, 0.50 (95% CI 0.27 to 0.95); I 2 =65%). Moderate-quality evidence suggests that video decision aids result in greater knowledge related to ACP (standardised mean difference, 0.58 (95% CI 0.38 to 0.77); I 2 =0%). No study reported on the congruence of end-of-life treatments with patients’ wishes. No study evaluated the effect of video decision aids when integrated into clinical care. Conclusions Video decision aids may improve some ACP-related outcomes. Before recommending their use in clinical practice, more evidence is needed to confirm these findings and to evaluate the impact of video decision aids when integrated into patient care.