Monday 8 December 2014

Medicine focused on patient preference: visual aids








Some argue that the great innovation in this second decade of the twenty first century should be medicine based on patient preference. To understand it better, it’s about women being well informed of all probabilistic knowledge regarding the decision to have a mammogram screening or not. Therefore it is the woman who takes responsibility for her decision and not the government or insurance company of her choice. The same would be said for men and the PSA.

This approach would seem reasonable enough, if it were not for the fact that, according to a particular US survey (National Adult Literacy Survey), half of the population has difficulty in managing simple numerical operations. For this reason I have chosen this blog post by Kevin Pho, who has always been innovative in the field of clinical management, who presents an article by Peter Wei, a medical student, who gives us a visual aid developed by the Mayo Clinic. You can argue that those who struggle with mathematical operations will also have difficulties interpreting graphs, but if the graphics are designed to be understood its less of an issue and if that is not the case, consider the following:



The Mayo Clinic, as in other issues, leads the way in the development of visual materials designed for making medicine based on patient preference more feasible.


Jordi Varela
Editor

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