2013 Winter Medical Editor's Meeting: Floyd J. Fowler Jr., PhD

1. Using Patient Interviews to
Support Patient Decisions
Jack Fowler
January 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
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3. We always used 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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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9. And that is what we are talking about today
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