english.prescrire.org > Spotlight > Archives : 2015 > Serving patients' best interests

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Serving patients' best interests

Agreeing treatment goals with patients and sharing information without prejudicing their choices is fundamental for enabling patients who so wish to be involved in treatment decisions.

Surely healthcare professionals' main aim is to improve healthcare users' lives by helping them to achieve their own goals. Respecting patients' wishes means making that healthcare professionals should make the best use of their skills and knowledge within the limits of their personal ethics. The pre-requisite is sharing information and listening with an open mind.

Helping patients analyse and express their health needs requires availability, trust and open-mindedness. Healthcare professionals also need to be aware of their own prejudices and mistaken notions about the wishes of those under their care; they should not confuse their own lifestyle choices with those of their patients.

Reliable information is necessary to weigh up the pros and cons and the risks of medical interventions.

Who better than the person concerned can assess how important a particular benefit is to them, or decide whether the suffering and risks involved are worth it, according to their values and life goals?

Sharing information openly with patients, and sometimes those close to them, so that they can participate if they wish in making health and life decisions: that is one of the essential roles of healthcare professionals who truly want to serve their patients' best interests and take care of them.

©Prescrire 1 February 2015

"To serve patients" Prescrire Int 2015; 24 (157): 32. (Pdf, free).
Download the full review.
Pdf, free

See also:

Determining the harm-benefit
balance of an intervention:
for each patient
Prescrire Int 2014;
23 (154): 274-277.
Pdf, free

Treatment goals: discuss
them with the patient
Prescrie Int 2012:
21 (132):276-278.
Pdf, subscribers only