Improving Cardiovascular Risk Communications
With Your Patients

Communicating risk to our patients isn’t easy. Risk is a complex concept to explain. Yet these discussions are ubiquitous to cardiology and at the core of informed decision making. But—even in the best of circumstances—many factors can influence how someone will understand or react to risk. Assuring patients have a firm understanding of their cardiovascular risk, what it means and what can be done to modify it is essential to providing quality cardiology care.

ACC has developed this Toolkit to help cardiology care teams and primary care clinicians improve cardiovascular risk discussions, in turn, making them more meaningful to and actionable for patients. These tools can be leveraged for trainings and some are intended to be used at the point of care.

Improving Cardiovascular Risk Communications – Quick Reference Guide
Gives the busy clinician high level tips and lessons from the full toolkit.

Improving Cardiovascular Risk Communications – Full Toolkit
The complete toolkit provides a comprehensive look at risk communications as a process that is built on trust and must factor in patient preferences and goals, key influencers, including health literacy, as well as the psychological or emotional response. This resource covers:

• A rationale for why risk communications must be improved and when they occur
• The value of effective risk communications
• Common challenges and key influencers on patients’ perception of risk
• What risk looks – and feels – like to patients and trust as the foundation
• Back to Basics – 8 Ways to Build Trust and Compassion
• How to talk about risk
• Strategies for Success: Putting Risk Communications into Practice
• Checklist for Improving Cardiovascular Risk Discussions
• Additional Resources & Tools
• Case Scenarios for Redefining Risk Discussions
• Explaining ASCVD Risk Scores for Primary Prevention
• Explaining Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke Risk
• Explaining Risk to Patients with Severe Aortic Stenosis
• Explaining Risks of Flu to Cardiac Patients
• Patient Tools
• What is Risk? Making Sense of Cardiovascular Risk – helps explain risk, what it means, what it might sound and feel like; includes a list of cardiovascular risk factors
• What’s My Risk of Heart Disease? Self-Assessment Tool – A printable tool that can be used before or after visits to gauge a patient’s understanding and perception of risk
• A Picture of Risk – A printable tool to visually show a patient his or her risk