• Victoria A Shaffer, Lukas Hulsey, and Brian J Zikmund-Fisher.
• Department of Health Sciences and Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. Electronic address: shafferv@health.missouri.edu.
• Patient Educ Couns. 2013 Nov 1; 93 (2): 255-64.

ObjectiveTo examine the effect of patient narratives that discuss decision processes versus patient experiences on decisions about treatments for early stage breast cancer.MethodsWe recruited 300 women with no previous history of breast cancer to imagine that they had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and to choose between mastectomy and lumpectomy with radiation. Before learning about their treatment options, participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions with videotaped stories from fictitious cancer survivors, using a 2 (content: experience versus process) × 2 (emotional valence: positive only vs. positive and negative) factorial design, or a control condition with no stories. We measured information search, treatment intentions, and decision satisfaction.ResultsParticipants viewing process narratives spent more time searching for information. Participants viewing experience narratives reported a greater ability to imagine what it was like to experience the treatments; they also evaluated their decision more positively on several dimensions.ConclusionsProcess narratives appeared to guide information search, and experience narratives improved evaluations of the decision process.Practice ImplicationsThere is no evidence that process and experience narratives 'bias' decisions in the same manner as outcome narratives. Further, their potential to focus patient attention on key information and increase patient confidence in decision making appears significant.Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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