Communicating health risk in chronic kidney disease: a scoping review

Emma Caton*, Ros Aird, Maria Da Silva-Gane, Sivakumar Sridharan, David Wellsted, Shivani Sharma, Ken Farrington

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Background: Communicating risk is a key component of shared decision-making and is vital for the management of advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD). Despite this, there is little evidence to suggest how best to communicate health risk information to people living with CKD. The aim of this review was to identify and understand the nature of evidence-based risk communication strategies for people living with CKD. Methods: We searched MEDLINE, CINAHL and Scopus databases for articles which described or evaluated the use of risk communication strategies within the renal population. Similar risk communication strategies were collated and summarised narratively. Results: A total of 3700 sources were retrieved from the search, of which 19 were included in the review. Eleven studies reported primary research, and eight reported either narrative or systematic reviews. Seven main risk communication strategies were identified: framing, absolute versus relative risk, natural frequencies versus percentages, personalised risk estimates, qualitative risk communication, best-case/worst-case framework and use of graphs and graphics. There was a paucity of risk communication strategies specific to the CKD population. Conclusion: Evidence-based strategies to improve health risk communication for patients living with CKD are lacking. There is a need to establish the informational and communication preferences for patients living with CKD to better understand how to best communicate health risk information to individuals in this population.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Nephrology
Early online date8 Nov 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 8 Nov 2024

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Data Access Statement

All relevant data are included in this published article.

Keywords

  • Chronic kidney disease
  • Prognosis
  • Risk communication
  • Shared decision-making

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