Risk or chance

[ericlamarca]

There is a ticket in the Jira backlog for this: SS-575.

We already have the following in the content style guide: risk and risk factors We prefer "chance" to "risk" when we’re writing for the public.

We try not to talk about "risk factors" and instead explain them some other way.

We do use "risk" and "risk factors" when we are writing for a more specialist audience, for example when we’re explaining science news in Behind the Headlines.

@deanvipondNHS mentioned that the Learning Disability Alliance say to use change, rather than risk, e.g. change 'the risk of having a child with Downs Syndrome', to 'the chance of having a child with Downs Syndrome'.

Content designers responded as follows:

"In principle, yes, though we should be careful about context as chance can imply a random result, whereas risk is more accurate when, usually, describing something that would almost definitely lead to a condition or outcome. Eg smoking increases risk of narrowing of arteries. If chance was used instead of risk, it would imply it's a lottery if your arteries do narrow. However, aware that others may disagree!"

"Agree. I don't think they're entirely synonomous and it would depend on context. I think risk is more direct, more definite and can have more of an impact when talking about health. The OED mentions 'health risk', and we talk about 'risk' in many A-Z topics, which doesn't have such a specialist audience as BtH. I'm not sure that 'risk' is less clear or less well understood than 'chance'. Have they been tested?"

Do we need to change what's in the A to Z? Does it need further clarification/examples?

[sarawilcox]

Note also that "chance" isn't appropriate in the context of mental health. Instead, where someone is ‘at higher risk of suicide’, we might say ‘more likely to have suicidal thoughts’. We do already say: 'if someone’s life is at risk’ on the new urgent help for mental health page.

[sarawilcox]

Feedback from a psychiatrist: A patient talked about how alienating she found it to hear terms like risk and dangerousness applied to her. She advocated using ‘safety’ which can be applied both to risk of self-harm & suicide and risk to others.

Recommends 'health & safety': ‘health’ includes self-neglect which is less dramatic than 'safety'.

The Mental Health Act (1983) refers to “the health or safety of the patient” and “the protection of other persons”, so ‘health & safety’ is a nod to this also. 'Health and safety' can include the health and safety of others.

In a questionnaire survey of patients who got letters: of 40 responses, 60% said ‘health & safety’ was useful, 5% said it was not useful, the rest had no opinion; the questionnaire asked what was thought of each heading so this could have been interpreted as the heading itself or the content of that section of the letter.

[sarawilcox]

We do use risk fairly widely on the NHS website. We have a "Complications or risks" aspect for use in content modularisation. We're having to explain to users what QRISK is. Do we need to review our entry about risk?

Altitude sickness page:

Blood clots page:

Pancreatic cancer - causes:

To be discussed at content crit.

[sarawilcox]

Also rabies and yellow fever. Rabies: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/rabies/ Yellow fever: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/yellow-fever/

[sarawilcox]

Cardiovascular disease: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cardiovascular-disease/