Pharmaphorum Interview with Amy Berman
Amy Berman, Senior Program Officer with The John A. Hartford Foundation, was interviewed by Pharmaphorum, "Changing our Approach to Treatment Decision Making – An Interview with Amy Berman."
Q: "What simple measures can be taken to better integrate patients’ priorities into treatment planning and decision making?
A: "We simply need to ask questions of our patients, such as: what’s important to you? What types of treatment are you trying to avoid and why? We don’t spend enough time doing this. Clinicians can also do more to prepare people for what to expect by providing ‘anticipatory guidance’ – explaining how others experience the treatment, how the patient may feel, what things they may go through, and how to handle the challenges."
Amy also talked about being on the committee that helped produce the 2017 report, "Integrating the Patient and Caregiver Voice into Serious Illness Care," published by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and about being a member of CancerCare’s Patient Values Initiatives advisory board, helping to make sure that patients’ values and priorities are incorporated into treatment decision making.
To read the interview, click here.
To go to CancerCare’s Patient Values Initiatives, click here.
To go to NASEM's Integrating the Patient and Caregiver Voice into Serious Illness Care report, click here.