Promoting Patient Choice

The Promoting Patient Choice initiative encouraged clinicians and patients to participate in shared clinical decision-making. It supported the provision of accurate, clear and objective information, within a supportive environment, to enable patients to become actively involved in making treatment decisions if they chose to do so.

The initiative ran from 1991 to 1997, and was supported by the King’s Fund Grants Committee and the Gatsby Charitable Trust.

Seven developmental projects, started in 1995, produced a range of evidence-based information materials to help patients make treatment decisions on:

  • Anxiety
  • Colorectal cancer
  • Heavy menstrual periods (menorrhagia)
  • Post-operative pain relief
  • Ulcerative colitis
  • Urge incontinence.

Materials for Informed Choice - Evaluation (MICE) was also part of the initiative - a one-year project assessing the quality and usefulness of patient information materials available for ten different conditions, including back pain, cholesterol screening and treatment, stroke rehabilitation and depression. The materials were assessed by both patients and subject specialists. A report, Informing patients: an assessment of the quality of patient information materials, was published in 1998.

Other publications include Breaking Bad News: Establishing an auditable procedure for giving the cancer diagnosis, by G Walker, J Bradburn and J Maher. London: King’s Fund, 1996.

Key staff: Christine Farrell, David Gilbert, Mark Duman, Pat Tawn

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