Jack Fowler, PhD, senior scientific advisor at the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation provides an overview of the Foundation's path to developing decision aids that included patient narratives. This presentation was part of a Shared Decision Making Month webinar -- The Power of Narratives: How They Shape the Way Patients Make Medical Decisions.

1. Using Patient Interviews to
Support Patient Decisions
Jack Fowler
Senior Scientific Advisor
March 28, 2013

2. We started out with patient interviews
• Because —
• We thought patients should hear other
patients’ voices
• We particularly thought they needed to be
exposed to thoughtful patients who made
different choices to understand that there
really was a reasonable choice to be made
2

3. We always use real patients
• Because —
• We thought patients should hear other
patients’ voices
• We thought that creating patient scripts and
using actors was a slippery slope and
something we did not want to defend
3

4. We now are taking another look at patient
interviews
• Because --
• They are relatively expensive
• As pressure mounts to use more web and
mobile devices, and less DVD, questions are
raised about whether , or how much,
interviews are needed
4

5. Another look (cont’d)
• Because --
• Perhaps some decisions may benefit less than
others from patient interview material
• There are those in the medical decisions
world who have argued that patient
interviews are inherently biasing
5

6. And yet ….
• We have found patient interviews are the
most engaging elements of our programs
• When they are used the way we use them, we
are convinced (because we have evidence)
that patient interviews are not intrinsically
biasing
6

7. And yet ….(cont’d)
• There is serious evidence from cognitive
sciences that patients may not fully
understand an option until that have heard
someone articulate why they made that
choice—particularly the “less popular”
choices.
7

8. Of course
• We are well aware that patient (and doctor)
interviews can be powerful, and we need to
learn a lot more about how different ways of
using interviews detract from or support good
decision making.
8

9. And that is what we
are talking about today.
9

10. Today’s Experts
Floyd J. Fowler Jr., Diana L. Stilwell, MPH Victoria Shaffer, PhD
PhD Informed Medical University of Missouri
Informed Medical Decisions Foundation
Decisions Foundation

11. Thank You!
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