Talking to patients about risk

Doctors talking with patients about alternative treatments for life-threatening disease must be sensitive to the ways in which patients understand and deal with risk. Risk is a combination of chance, measured by some known or estimated probability, and loss, which is a function of magnitude and the subjective value placed upon it by the person at risk. Prospect theory, economics, and the financial model of risk management provide insights that can help doctors as they present the best available data on the probable outcomes of various treatments and then guide patients through their own assessment of their preferences regarding those outcomes.