title: Patients' preferences for ways to communicate benefits of cardiovascular medication.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We wanted to determine patients' willingness to take preventive cardiovascular disease (CVD) medication in relation to their 5-year CVD risk score and modes of communicating benefits of therapy.
  
  
  METHODS
  Study participants were 934 consecutive patients drawn from family practitioners' waiting rooms in Auckland, New Zealand, who knew their 5-year CVD risk (ranging from 5% to 30%) and who completed a questionnaire asking them to rate how much various modes of communicating the benefits of therapy would encourage them to take medication daily, where the benefits from medication were proportional to their estimated CVD risk score.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients' rankings for modes of communicating the benefits of therapy were little influenced by sex, age, ethnicity, numeracy score, 5-year CVD risk, or concern about a heart attack. Patients clearly found relative risk reduction most encouraging, with absolute risk reduction rated second overall and numbers needed to treat the least likely to be persuasive, although preferences covered the full range and were not predictable from demographic or 5-year CVD risk data. Pictures were preferred to numbers by 55.1%, with a people-chart or a bar chart being equally favored. Even so, 61.8% preferred a doctor's opinion to any presentation by numbers or pictures.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patients' willingness to take preventive cardiovascular medication depends more on mode of communicating treatment benefit than on their short-term CVD risk score or their level of concern about a future cardiovascular event. Because individual preferences were not predictable, more than 1 modality is likely to be clinically useful for each patient.
authors.affiliation: University of Auckland, New Zealand. f.goodyear-smith@auckland.ac.nz
authors.forename: Felicity
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Goodyear-Smith
authors.forename: Timothy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kenealy
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wells
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Arroll
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Horsburgh
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy*; D002319:Cardiovascular System; D003142:Communication; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D058005:General Practitioners; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009520:New Zealand; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D057240:Patient Preference / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012306:Risk; D018570:Risk Assessment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires