Clinicians rank patient views as least important in diagnosis

Experts today call for more value to be given to patients' 'lived experiences' as a study of over 1,000 patients and clinicians found multiple examples of patient reports being under-valued. It's incredibly important that we listen to and value patients' insights and their own interpretations of their symptoms - after all, they are the people that know what it is like to live with their condition Melanie Sloan The research, led by a team at the University of Cambridge and Kings' College London, found that clinicians ranked patient self-assessments as least important in diagnostic decisions, and said that patients both overand under-played their symptoms more often than patients reported doing so. One patient shared the common feeling of being disbelieved as "degrading and dehumanising" and added: "If I had continued to have regard for clinicians' expertise over mine, I would be dead. When I enter a medical appointment and my body is being treated as if I don't have any authority over it and what I'm feeling isn't valid then that is a very unsafe environment. I'll tell them my symptoms and they'll tell me that symptom is wrong, or I can't feel pain there, or in that way." In a study published today in Rheumatology , researchers used the example of neuropsychiatric lupus, an incurable autoimmune disease that is particularly challenging to diagnose, to examine the different value given by clinicians to 13 different types of evidence used in diagnoses. This included evidence such as brain scans, patient views, and the observations of family and friends.