How can we help people make sense of medical data?

Abstract

Context: Information is a basic prerequisite to informed medical decision making.

General question: How can we help people interpret the quantitative data they need to make informed decisions?

Specific research challenge: To develop and evaluate interventions that will help people make sense of the quantitative data relevant to their health care decisions.

Standard approach: Traditional patient education interventions focus on providing disease-specific information (e.g., educational brochures about a single disease).

Potential difficulties: Interventions that focus on content--the provision of facts--may not be sufficient help for people facing medical decisions. Training that prepares people to make sense of the facts that they are given may be necessary.

Alternate approach: We propose developing a generic (i.e., not disease-specific) tutorial to prepare people to better understand and more critically evaluate data on disease risk and the benefits and harms of treatment. This tutorial aims to improve critical reading skills by teaching people about risk (e.g., probability and rates) and showing them what to look for in statements about risk (e.g., time frame), how to put disease risk and treatment benefit in context (e.g., evaluating competing risks), how to interpret changes in risk, and whether to believe the statements about changes in risk.