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The Salzburg Statement: Patients Must Be Involved In Healthcare Decisions

Last Thursday at the headquarters of the British Medical Journal in London, an important announcement will be made about patients’ rights to be actively involved in decisions about their treatment. Below is the press release about it.

The subject is shared decision making, which we’ve been posting about recently (series here; initial post here.) Developed by the participants in a Salzburg Global Seminar last December, the document is called the Salzburg Statement. The pivotal distinction here is the difference between informed consent, in which the physician assesses the options and selects one, and gets your consent to do it; and informed choice, in which clinicians tell you the options, with all the pros and cons, and let you choose, based on your preferences.

Click the image to download. (It’s an A4 PDF; to print, those using letter size paper should select “Page Scaling: Fit.”)

Here’s today’s press release: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*

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