Consultation Skills
Skills for Explaining Risk
DOWNLOADS
path: EXPLAINING RISK
- communicating risk to patients.pdf
- communicating risk.ppt
- explaining risks – turning numerical data into meaningful pictures.pdf
- risk – can doctors and patients talk the same language.pdf
- risk – communicating it to patients bhf.pdf
- risk – communicating it to patients bmj.pdf
- risk – communicating it to patients.pdf
- risk – communicating risk to patients.pdf
- risk – how people respond to it.ppt
- risk – teaching doctors how to communicate risk.doc
- risk and explaining risk.ppt
- risk explanation – turning numerical data into meaningful pictures.pdf
Explaining risk is not easy!
Explaining and conveying the level of risk to a patient is not easy. But it’s something that has to be done frequently by doctors because not much we do can be done with 100% accuracy, reliability or validity. Some patient’s trust us to make decisions for them, but helping explain risk to a patient and their view thereafter will help us make joint decisions that are truly more suited to the patient.
Quick Tips for Explaining Risk
When explaining the risk of something…
- Avoid using terms like common or rare
- Avoid using %; instead, put the figures in context
–1 in 100 rather than 1%
–1 person in a town like Warwick rather than 1 in 30000
– Instead of saying 5% risk… 1 in 20 chance
– Instead of saying 5% risk… 5 out of 100 people like you
– Instead of saying 5% risk… 5 out of 100 ways things may turn out for you
– Many people think a risk of 1:25 is greater than 4:100; those people tend to be less interested in shared-care / informed-choice - Use picture diagrams (pictographs) to help – like the Cates Plot diagrams (weblink above)
- Use simple tables, charts or infographics to display the risk in an easy to understand fashion (reading age 12)
