Everything that doctors and other health workers do involves communication about the benefits and harms to be expected from interventions - whether they are therapeutic, diagnostic, or prophylactic. As health professionals, we need to share our understanding and perceptions of benefits and harms with patients and their families as fully as we can. We also have to share them with other professionals. When we do so we have to remember that how we personally value particular benefits and harms may well differ from how another person values them. A clinician who recommends an intervention does so in the belief that its benefits outweigh the harms that it can cause. In most consultations there is little time in which to explain in detail what these benefits and harms are, or to find out what the patient thinks about them. Moreover, most clinicians are not trained or practised at describing and explaining benefits and harms clearly to patients, and much of the time they also lack important information about these aspects.
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