Transcript
Announcer:
This is DermConsult on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Steven Feldman, a Professor of Dermatology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem. He’ll be discussing the future of patient-centered care in psoriasis. Let’s hear from Dr. Feldman now.
Dr. Feldman:
The future may change a little bit with regard to quality-of-life goals and patient-centered outcomes. I feel like dermatologists have always been doing patient-centered care. They haven't been using PASI scores to tell whether patients are doing well or not. I think we largely use what I call the “two-point patient global assessment.” We ask patients, "How are you doing?" And if they say, "I'm doing great," then we tend not to change therapy. And if they say, "I'm doing poorly," we do change therapy. I think the studies show that some of our most modern treatments have really high levels of getting people completely clear.
And the question may be, what do you do for the patient who says, "I'm doing well," but you see they still have disease? Do you say, "Do you want to be doing better? Do you want to try something that's even more potent?" I think there will be differences in philosophy about this. I'm kind of laissez-faire—"Hey, if they're happy, I'm not going to rock the boat." Yes, maybe they would be doing even better with a different therapy, but maybe not. Maybe they would do worse if we changed the therapy. Maybe they'd have some side effects. Other people might say, "I want to give patients their lives back. I want them completely clear, and I'll work hard to do that. And even if they feel like they're doing pretty well, I'm going to encourage them to try to do better."
When we focus on patient-centered care, we need to have educated patients, and they need to know their options. And I don't think there's any way a dermatologist in practice realistically could educate patients on everything they needed to know about psoriasis at an office visit. I find the most efficient way to do it is to encourage patients to join the National Psoriasis Foundation or at least make use of their resources. The resources are available online at psoriasis.org. And this is a fabulous way to educate patients about their treatment options. And I think the National Psoriasis Foundation encourages patients to work with their dermatologists to be adherent to their treatments. But it's certainly helpful for them to know about their treatments up front and the benefits and the risks when they come to get our advice.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Steven Feldman sharing insights on patient-centered psoriasis management. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit DermConsult on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
