The lure of ‘patient choice’

Article Figures & Data

Table 1

Guidelines on the component parts of patient information by goal of intervention.

		Intervention purpose

		Inform/prepare/educate	Participate/informed decision making	Participate/shared decision making

	Components
Passive patient	Readable or comprehensible summary of illness or health condition	✓	✓	✓

Role	Readable or comprehensible information about pros and cons of treatment option(s)	✓	✓	✓

	Risk figures presented in an accessible way: note; not verbal equivalents (for example, low/high)	✓	✓	✓

	Information about procedures, aftercare, and other information sources	✓	✓	✓

	Patient prompt to prepare questions for consultation	✓	✓	✓

	Explicit reference to the decision to be made		✓	✓

	Figure to represent decision options and outcomes		✓	✓

	Layout to help patients reason about options' attributes		✓	✓

	Technique to help patient express values about outcomes		✓	✓

	Technique to encourage reasoning/trade-offs		✓	✓

Active patient	Clinician prompt to provide expert opinion and/or evidence			✓

Role	Clinician training to understand and negotiate choices based on different values and experience			✓

Reproduced from Winterbottom A, Conner M, Mooney A, Bekker HL. Evaluating the quality of patient leaflets about renal replacement therapy across UK renal units. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2007; 22(8): 2291–2296. By permission from the European Renal Association − European Dialysis and Transplant Association.32