Friday, July 11, 2014

SCOPED helps patients make better decisions

Making decisions when you are ill is hard. Patients are often confused - and the overload of poor quality information on the internet just makes a bad situation worse.

Doctors are often not very helpful, because they can be quite directive, and are likely to push patients into doing what they think is right for them, rather then allow patients to make up their own mind.

Jeff Belkora developed SCOPED as a checklist for making decisions.

SCOPED stands for:
Situation, Choices, Objectives, People, Evaluation, and Decisions.
People use SCOPED to think, talk, read and write about decisions. 
Situation: clarifying known facts about my condition
Choices: clarifying which options are available
Objectives: clarifying my goals and priorities
People: clarifying roles and responsibilities
Evaluation: clarifying how my choices affect my objectives
Decisions: clarifying which choice is best and next steps

http://www.scoped.org

This is a very valuable tool for non-directive counselling, as it helps patients to find the right answer for themselves. All doctors and patient advocates should use this - especially for elective medical procedures 

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