The Drug Facts Box
The Drug Facts Box
Making Informed Decisions about Prescription Drugs Possible
The idea that people should be able to participate meaningfully in personal medical decisions is so widely accepted that it is hard to believe that things were ever otherwise. The idea that doctors should routinely withhold important information from patients, order treatments without informed consent, or should not consider patient preferences—once routine practice—would be as acceptable now as blood-letting to purge bad humors. The modern shared decision-making model has two basic inputs. First, people need the facts: What are their options and the likely outcomes of these options? Second, they need some clarity about their values: How much do they care about the various outcomes and what do they have to go through to get them? Good decisions require a combination of facts and values. Without the facts, good decision making cannot happen. This chapter reviews how drug information generally gets to the U.S. public and recommends how this can be better accomplished through the use of “drug facts boxes.”
Keywords: Strüngmann Forum Reports, communication strategies, drug facts boxes, drug information, patient preferences, shared decision making
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