Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice with the Interventional Initiative

In this episode, our host Dr. Eric Keller interviews a panel of leaders from the Interventional Initiative, a not-for-profit organization devoted to raising awareness of minimally invasive image-guided procedures (MIIPs) among patients and referring clinicians. Our guests are interventional radiologists Drs. Susan Jackson and Isabel Newton and nurse and hospital administrator Margaret Simor.

We start by discussing the origins of the Interventional Initiative, which started in 2015. After recognizing the public’s knowledge gap within interventional radiology procedures, the team decided to embark on a docuseries project to capture the impact that the field of IR could have on patients’ lives. This docuseries, entitled “Without a Scalpel,” is available on many streaming platforms. The series follows interventional radiologists and their patients in a variety of procedures and medical settings. Presenting new information within a film format has created a welcoming introduction to the field for both patients and physicians.

Next, we shift to discussing the Interventional Initiative’s most recent project, a collection of patient decision aids. These materials are unique because they are specifically crafted to meet health literacy levels in the general public. They also provide statistics and graphics that clearly communicate benefits, risks, and alternatives to IR procedures. Ms. Simor, speaking from the experience of an IR nurse, recognizes the knowledge gaps that patients struggle with when giving informed consent. She looks forward to sharing the decision aids with other providers. Dr. Jackson advocates for presenting the decision aids in a variety of formats (paper, online, app-based, EHR-accessible) so that they are most available to as many people as possible.

Dr. Newton describes the success of early clinical trials, which show that using the patient decision aids enriches physician-patient conversations, enhances patient autonomy, and even makes patients perceive that they spent more time with the physician. She encourages anyone who is interested in helping beta test the decision aid to reach out to the Interventional Initiative.