Qualitative risk formats preferred | Quantitative risk formats preferred | |
---|---|---|
Patient factors considered by GP | - patients who don’t understand the numbers (‘blank look on face’) | - bring up numbers if patient is higher risk or risk not well controlled/ managed |
- numbers assumed to be less helpful for less educated/literate patients | - patients who are interested in the science/evidence (males, highly educated) | |
- patients who will get stuck in a long discussion of the numbers rather than focusing on what they can do | - use numbers to justify treatment/no treatment for borderline patients | |
- withhold absolute risk from highly anxious and low risk patients | - gamblers more familiar with probability | |
Descriptions of risk | - risk level: low/negative risk, medium/moderate risk, high/severe/positive/increased risk | - absolute risk % (probability of a heart attack or stroke in the next 5 or 10 years) |
- multiple risk factors: coexisting, mounting up, exponential | - convert absolute risk % into a frequency (e.g. 1 in 8 people like you) | |
- scenarios: future cardiac event, being ill for a prolonged period, explain in terms of patient’s life (e.g. family member who had CVD event) | - change in absolute risk % if risk factors reduced | |
- analogies: compare to other risks | - relative risk for particular populations (diabetics, high risk ethnicity) | |
- compare individual risk factor results to guideline targets | ||
Communication tools | - position on colour-coded absolute risk chart (red = high risk, green = low risk) | |
- absolute risk calculator to show current/future risk and effect of risk factors | ||
- images (e.g. cholesterol spikes, what the brain looks like during a stroke, coronary artery to show relationship between high cholesterol and heart attack) |