#13 How to talk about risks – Alexandra Freeman

People’s perception of risk can vary greatly from person to
person, making it challenging for healthcare professionals to
communicate benefits and harms of medicines in a balanced
fashion. Alexandra Freeman from the Winton Centre for Risk and
Evidence Communication discusses how to give patients the
information they need to decide what's best for them.

Tune in to find out:


Why people perceive risks so differently

Why medical communicators should strive to inform rather than
persuade

How to communicate in a trustworthy fashion



Want to know more?


There is no right way to communicate evidence to patients,
but there are a few things you can do to avoid getting it wrong.

Conventional communication techniques are good for persuading
people – but when the aim is to inform, the principles of
evidence communication should be applied instead.

Graphics can help people translate abstract numbers into
contextualised risks they can relate to, like these visuals that
illustrate the risk of blood clots with the AstraZeneca COVID-19
vaccine.

These evidence-based guidelines can help professional
communicators illustrate the personalised risk of dying from
COVID-19.

The Winton Centre offers plenty of resources on risk and
evidence communication, including free e-learning courses for
healthcare professionals, the Risky Talk podcast with
statistician David Spiegelhalter, and the RealRisk tool to help
healthcare professionals and communicators extract the right
statistics from academic papers.



For more on communicating benefits and harms in
pharmacovigilance, revisit this Drug Safety Matters episode on
vaccine safety communication.





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