As patients, we expect our doctors to understand everything if we come to them with a health concern or problem. We anticipate being given reels of information and recommendations about what we need to do in order to feel better or manage our conditions. However, a new book by statistician Gerd Gigerenzer claims that piles of percentages are hard for doctors to digest, and this makes it difficult for patients to make informed decisions about their treatment options.
An expert in uncertainty and decision making, Gigerenzer’s book Risk Savvy puts medics in the cross-hairs as it focuses on health professionals for not giving patients all the information they need to make their treatment choices. Gigerenzer believes that not only do doctors struggle to recall relevant stats when patients ask, but that even if they have the right numbers to hand, they can’t translate the figures correctly.
Laying out information
No matter if maths isn’t your strong suit, as Gigerenzer explains that setting out probabilities as percentages is incredibly confusing, even if it is standard practice for medical research. He is currently campaigning for risks to now be expressed using numbers of people instead and where possible, clear diagrams, so that information can be understood and relayed easily by both doctor and patient.
Research into medical statistics throws light on some interesting issues, one being the key differences between a survival rate and mortality rate. In a survey of 412 US doctors, three quarters mistakenly thought that higher survival rates meant more lives were saved, with doctors more likely to recommend a test based on a high survival rate, rather than a low mortality rate.
Despite this worry, Gigerenzer is confident the solution is simple. “It’s not a problem of the medical mind. It’s a problem of training at the universities, in the medical departments where young doctors are trained in everything except statistical thinking,” he told the BBC.
