EHA-ESH Joint Symposium

EHA-ESH JOINT SYMPOSIUM

11:15 – 12:30, Hall 7

NEGOTIATING WITH THE HIGHLY INFORMED PATIENT
An interactive session for hematologists.

In the current era of ready access to information from the internet, an increasing proportion of patients are able and willing to search medical and patient led sites to discover the implications of their illness. As a result, many patients will attend the clinic armed with information that will inform the discussion with their hematologist over the issues surrounding treatment decisions.

While it is inevitable that a significant amount of information that is discovered by patients by searching the internet is unreliable or not applicable to their individual situation, patients are increasingly able to identify relevant sites. They will then be in a position to use the information that they have gathered to enter into an informed discussion of their management. This offers significant advantages to the hematologist who is willing to accept that the patient is entitled to an informed discussion about their management in which the patient’s views are given full consideration; however the complexity of individual patient’s management may result in conflicts over the decisions to be taken.

The process of negotiation with a highly informed patient moves the nature of the clinical consultation far away from previous ‘paternalistic’ approaches, in which the clinician was in exclusive control of the information on which treatment decisions would be based. Hematologists may now discover that they need new skills to engage with such patients and achieve a rapport that will enable them to enter into a partnership with the patient based on mutual trust and respect. It will only be on this basis that patients such as these will engage fully in treatment rather than becoming dissatisfied and seek second opinions until they find a clinician who will agree with their wishes.