Garcia-Retamero Rocio, Cokely Edward T, Wicki Barbara, Joeris Alexander
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Spain; Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany; National Institute for Risk & Resilience, and Department of Psychology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
Patient Educ Couns. 2016 Jul;99(7):1156-1161. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2016.01.013. Epub 2016 Jan 29.
To effectively practice evidence-based medicine, surgeons need to understand and be able to communicate health-relevant numerical information. We present the first study examining risk literacy in surgeons by assessing numeracy and surgical risk comprehension. Our study also investigated whether visual aids improve risk comprehension in surgeons with limited numeracy.
Participants were 292 surgeons from 60 countries who completed an instrument measuring numeracy and evaluated the results of a randomized controlled trial including post-surgical side-effects. Half of the surgeons received this information in numbers. The other half received the information represented visually. Accuracy of risk estimation, reading latency, and estimate latency (i.e., deliberation) were assessed.
Some surgeons have low numeracy and could not correctly interpret surgical risks without additional support. Visual aids made risks transparent and eliminated differences in risk understanding between more and less numerate surgeons, increasing the amount of time that less numerate surgeons spent deliberating about risks.
Visual aids can be an efficient and inexpensive means of improving risk comprehension and clinical judgement in surgeons with low numerical and statistical skills.
Programs designed to help professionals represent and communicate health-relevant numerical information in simple transparent graphs may unobtrusively promote informed decision making.
为了有效地践行循证医学，外科医生需要理解并能够交流与健康相关的数值信息。我们开展了第一项通过评估算术能力和手术风险理解来研究外科医生风险素养的研究。我们的研究还调查了视觉辅助工具是否能提高算术能力有限的外科医生的风险理解。
参与者为来自60个国家的292名外科医生，他们完成了一项测量算术能力的工具，并评估了一项包括术后副作用的随机对照试验的结果。一半的外科医生以数字形式接收此信息。另一半以视觉形式接收信息。评估了风险估计的准确性、阅读潜伏期和估计潜伏期（即思考时间）。
一些外科医生算术能力较低，在没有额外支持的情况下无法正确解读手术风险。视觉辅助工具使风险变得清晰易懂，消除了算术能力较强和较弱的外科医生在风险理解上的差异，增加了算术能力较弱的外科医生思考风险的时间。
视觉辅助工具可以成为提高算术和统计技能较低的外科医生风险理解和临床判断的一种高效且经济的手段。
旨在帮助专业人员以简单易懂的图表呈现和交流与健康相关数值信息的项目，可能会在不引人注意的情况下促进明智的决策。
