PHRM3031 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Penicillin, Institutional Review Board, United States Public Health Service
Document Summary
Treatment according to single-disease guidelines is likely to: give patient a significant treatment burden, under-estimate harms of combined treatments (drug-disease and/or drug-drug interactions, provide limited guidance on when treatments can be stopped de-prescribing. Guidelines need to implemented with care and common sense: Qualitative descriptors of risk are interpreted differently: high risk", low risk", etc. Framing is important (and its effects depend on context) Both absolute and relative risks can be important, and each in isolation can be misleading: patients find nnt confusing. Need more work on the best way to numerically communicate uncertainty. Present natural frequencies where possible e. g. 3 out of 100 people. Give benefits and harms using the same denominator. Try to put risk into perspective by comparing it to other events. Experiments on humans prior to and during wwii led to the development of international policy on research ethics: two critical documents are nuremberg code and declaration of helsinki.
