How to help Patients make Wiser Health Choices

From Yahoo News:

There’s no single right answer for everyone yet patients often are ill-equipped to weigh increasingly complex medical options. Now there’s a small but growing movement to get unbiased reports of the pros and cons of different tests and treatments into patients’ hands before they fall back on, “Doc, just tell me what you’d choose.”

“No matter how hard I tried” to be objective, “inevitably my personal biases got involved,” recalls breast surgeon Dr. Dale Collins of New Hampshire’s Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, which helped pioneer the concept that it calls shared decision-making.

Think of it as “informed consent 2.0,” going a step beyond the brief patient education that doctors are required to provide.

Read more about these new tools for decision making.