Communicating risk

摘要

Harmsen et al ’s interesting paper1 on risk communication relates closely to work published 13 years ago in this journal. Misselbrook and Armstrong2 used a hypothetical scenario to look at the effect of giving patients the same statistical information in different ways: 75% said they would accept medication if given the absolute risk reduction, whereas only 44% would if given a ‘personal probability of benefit model’. This is echoed by Harmsen et al ’s finding that giving information in a form chosen to be as comprehensible as possible reduced the subsequent uptake of preventative medication; what their study adds, as they say, is supporting evidence based on ‘real patients’.