Trying to explain potential outcomes, and their likelihoods, is a challenge. Indeed, patients who just had a catheterization procedure remember few of the related risks and benefits.1 Patients are often unfamiliar with the terminology, and vary widely in health status, numeracy, health literacy and information preferences. Complicating things further is the difficulty of ensuring that patients understand the ‘material risks’ for them as individuals: a matter not only of probability but also of the impact it could have on them personally.

This task is not only an ethical imperative but also a legal one, enshrined in law in many countries, such as the 2015 Montgomery judgement in the UK (figure 1). At the Winton Centre, our research into how individuals understand risk aims to offer a few considerations and recommendations to help clinicians achieve this.