Introduction
In shared decision making, the communication process by which patients and clinicians work together to make optimal healthcare decisions is increasingly important. To facilitate this process, decision aids are commonly used to provide information on disease, and on the benefits, and risks of treatment. As part of this, effective communication between healthcare professionals and patients is an important aspect of patient-centered care and shared decision making. Appropriate communication of both health-related risks and benefits are essential to help patients make the best-informed health-related decisions that are concordant with their personal values, experiences, and preferences. However, informing patients about their risk of developing a disease, reducing the risk or reaping the benefits associated with taking a medication or accepting the risk of side effects associated with a treatment remain challenging. Different intrinsic and extrinsic factors could, at least partially, explain difficulties encountered by patients in understanding information provided by their clinicians. Many patients lack the health literacy needed to understand the words used by clinicians when describing medical information [
1]. Clinicians often use medical jargon that is poorly understood by patients. Low numeracy, defined as a low ability to understand numbers and percentages, can also lead to misunderstanding of risk, side effects, and benefits of treatments [
2]. Some studies have highlighted observations that perception of risk can be influenced by emotion and by personal experiences [
3]. In addition to these intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors may also explain differences in perceptions of risk by healthcare professionals and patients. A hallmark of effective doctor-patient communication on risk is an established relationship of trust [
4]. In such a setting, physicians are best equipped to provide understandable and accessible information to patients, with consideration of their numeracy and health literacy levels.
Adequate communication of risk is especially important in the management of patients who are at risk of fragility fractures, such as those living with osteoporosis or osteopenia, where the benefits of treatment and risk of side effects represent key information for making an informed decision. To date, only a minority of patients with fragility fracture are diagnosed or treated appropriately. Patients with fractures may not be aware that they are at risk of subsequent fractures and osteoporosis [
5]. Accordingly, from clinical and public health points of view, there is a need for improvement in healthcare professionals’ communication to patients regarding risk of fracture, aiming to increase patients’ understanding of the risks and consequences of fractures. Fractures may be followed by a cascade of declining mobility, physical activity, muscle strength, quality of life, and balance, contributing to loss of independence and limitation of daily activities that could lead to falls, fall-related injuries including fractures, and in some cases institutionalized medical care [
6‐
8]. Improving patients’ knowledge could potentially increase the initiation of and adherence to treatment, and thus lead to fracture prevention.
Recommendations and guidance for successful health risk communication between clinicians and patients have been developed, some of which are focused on communicating risk of fracture within populations at risk. To improve the management of fractures, this study aims to summarize, within a scoping review, recommendations and existing tools for effective communication regarding general health risk, and, more specifically, for communication between healthcare professionals and patients regarding risk of fracture.
Methods
We performed a scoping review which, in contrast to a systematic review, seeks to present an overview of a large and diverse body of literature pertaining to a broad topic. Within this research method, we seek to provide an overview of communication regarding general health risk. Systematic reviews usually focused on a discrete research question, and produce a summary answer; this was not our objective [
9]. Recommendations for the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews were followed throughout the whole procedure of this scoping review (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis, extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist) [
10]. No protocol was registered, but this is available on request.
Literature search
The scoping review was organized in two parts. First, we searched for studies presenting methods, rules, recommendations or guidelines for improving communication regarding general health risks. No limit was specified for patient population or disease state. Second, we searched for studies investigating communication on risk of fracture risk (ways to present communication on risk of fracture, recommendations for improving communication on risk of fracture, etc.) in populations at risk of fracture (i.e., with osteoporosis/osteopenia or with a history of previous fragility fractures).
Medline (via Ovid) was searched in April 2020 to identify relevant studies for both parts of this scoping review. Search strategies are available in Appendix
1. No date restriction was applied and the search was limited to publications in English [
11]. All study designs were included with the exception of letters, editorials and case reports.
Study selection and data extraction
All identified publications were screened for their eligibility by two reviewers (CB and NL), first based on their titles and abstracts and then based on their full texts. Any discrepancies were resolved through discussion between the researchers.
Data were extracted using a standardized extraction form that was pre-tested on a sample of two studies. The following data were extracted from each included publication: authors, year of publication, country (of original paper), study design, type of population, type of risk communication tool, and main results. For better accuracy of data extraction, the data of selected papers were extracted by one reviewer and double-checked by the other.
Data synthesis
As the objective of our research was to provide a comprehensive overview of recommendations and existing tools for communicating about risk, a narrative description of results was carried out. We first present studies regarding the first scoping review about recommendations and tools for effective communication of risk in health overall, and then studies reporting on communication regarding risk of fracture.
Discussion
This scoping review offers an overview of effective risk communication between healthcare professionals and patients. All studies identified in this review agreed that communication of risk is an essential component in the care of patients. There are very close and strong relationships between the quality of risk communication provided by clinicians and the initiation of treatment and persistence in treatment on the part of the patient.
Although many or most clinicians may feel that shared decision making is already standard in their practice, the evidence suggests that it is still possible to improve communication between clinician and patient or their caregivers such as spouse, children, or friends when the patient has cognitive difficulties.
A growing body of research supports the use of visual presentation of diagnostic and health risk information as an efficient way to communicate risk. Using available and effective educational materials in daily practice to communicate risk in a highly efficient manner could be an important step in enhancing patient education, disease self-management, initiation of treatment, and ultimately persistence in treatment.
Our scoping review has identified various features as contributing to patients’ understanding of risk. We identified the ways in which information is presented by clinicians, the ability of the clinician to modify their language according to the needs of the patient, and the relationship between clinicians and patients. We have noted that patients’ emotions and self-perceptions of their disease modify the way they understand information on the risk of disease information. Patients need to feel free to ask questions. The way information is understood by patients is limited by factors of health literacy and numeracy as well as biases. All these features need to be considered to successfully communicate risk.
This scoping review also highlights the many ways that risk can be communicated from clinicians to patients. To strengthen communication between clinician and patients, it is recommended that the clinician use plain language, and present numerical data using absolute rather than relative risk. It is also recommended that fractions be avoided; use decimals instead. The sole use of verbal description of risk should also be avoided; use appropriate visual aids such as pie charts, icon arrays, bar charts, or pictograms. It is also recommended that the communication format be tailored to the needs of the individual patient or population.
The development of fracture risk assessment tools such as FRAX®, which calculate absolute risk for fracture over 10 years, offers new opportunities for clinicians to better communicate risk of fracture. However, to date, little has been done to assess the optimal ways to communicate absolute risk of fracture to patients. This scoping review found a general lack of understanding of the most effective ways to communicate absolute risk of fracture and inconsistent understanding of risk of fracture by patients when the risk is presented to them.
The most investigated method for communicating risk of fracture is sending patients an individualized letter, after a DXA test, with information about the risk of fracture and educational material about osteoporosis. However, none of the RCTs comparing this method to usual care were able to demonstrate superiority for change of participants’ bone health behavior (e.g., calcium and vitamin D intake, enhancing preventive measures against risk of fractures) or for understanding the risk of fracture. This may be because a letter format is simply not effective or because the written content of the letter is poorly expressed and/or not well understood by the patient. Moreover, other types of educational interventions, such as brochures or websites, are often inadequate and do not always provide evidence-based information and or effectively communicate risk. Quality of understanding using this written approach may therefore be limited. Conversations with patients can be enhanced with decision aids, assuming they are accurate and unbiased in communicating the desired information. Numeric data (e.g., frequencies, percentage, probabilities data) in risk communication is often challenging and should be adapted to the literacy levels of patients. Because health statistics are commonly misunderstood by patients, graphs, or other pictorial representations may be useful in presenting complex numerical information. Based on our scoping review, graphs and stoplight color systems seem to be the most preferred and understandable visual methods for communicating information about risk of fracture. Pictograms with faces, colored in red in case of risk, are rated as the most difficult to understand method. This format does not seem to allow people to quickly ascertain their individual risk category [
77]. Another innovative educational material, 3-D printed bone models, was tested in one study [
71]. Individuals receiving an interview augmented by the presentation of these 3-D bone models, following their DXA scans, were more emotionally affected by osteoporosis and reported a greater understanding of osteoporosis. It is important to note that these new techniques of communication, even if they improve the quality of communication between healthcare professionals and patients, have not yet demonstrated beneficial effects on initiation of treatment.
In this scoping review, we did not identify any original studies that looked at whether there could be any differences between successful communication with patients having osteoporosis/osteopenia (based on their T-score, without a previous fracture) and patients with a history of previous fragility fracture (regardless of T-score/diagnosis of osteoporosis). As both populations could potentially differ in their preferences and needs, to improve appropriate use of tools for communicating risk of fracture, studies aiming to determine whether similar or different messages are required for these two different populations would therefore be needed. Well-designed scoping reviews provide comprehensive assessments of topics of interest and may be especially useful in providing an overview of available research evidence when more evidence is needed to answer a specific clinical question.
Although we carefully followed the PRISMA-ScR statement, our methodology nevertheless has some limitations. First, given the objective of this study, we investigated only one bibliographic database. Nevertheless, we performed a deeper manual search to identify the maximum available evidence. Second, because of logistical organization, data extraction was performed by only one investigator. Therefore, we could be prone to bias in collection of data. Nevertheless, a second reviewer carefully checked all extracted data to minimize possible bias. Finally, we did not measure the quality of all individual studies involved in this scoping review. Because of the large heterogeneity of included study designs, quality appraisal of individual studies is difficult to standardize and is not mandatory.
Nevertheless, to our knowledge, this is the first scoping review summarizing evidence on effective tools for communicating risk of fracture. This study could therefore be helpful in improving the way healthcare professionals communicate with patients. The final goal may be enhanced by shared decision making, “an approach where clinicians and patients share the best available evidence when faced with the tasks of making decisions, and where patients are supported to consider options, to achieve informed preferences” [
80]. To encourage and support informed decision making, healthcare professionals are encouraged to apply the various recommendations presented in this scoping review. In the field of communicating risk of fractures, further studies are needed to offer a better comprehensive approach to optimal communication. Moreover, cultural differences among patients must be recognized and appreciated so that communication of risk can be customized as appropriate. We look forward to the development of improved user-friendly tools to facilitate communication of the risk of fracture. One of our suggestions would be that risk of fracture derived from FRAX® (or other risk algorithms) could be instantly converted to a pictorial representation (e.g., a spotlight bar chart) of the risk, which can be shown and explained to the patient directly following their DXA scan.
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