The INFORMED Podcast was created as a companion to the book series Conversations with Pam: The POWER of INFORMED Healthcare, co-authored by Pam Popper and Heidi Plumb.

Each episode features conversations with people who believe patients deserve something more from their healthcare: informed consent.

For decades, we've been told to “follow your doctor's orders.” But what if a doctor's recommendation should be viewed as an option to consider—not an order to blindly follow?

Before saying yes to a drug, treatment, test, or procedure, patients should have the opportunity to understand their diagnosis, learn about the recommended treatment, consider the risks and benefits, explore alternatives, and understand what could happen if they choose to do nothing at all.

We call this process INFORMED Medical Decision-Making—and it happens to be Pam's specialty. For more than 30 years, her company, Wellness Forum Health, has been teaching people how to become informed participants in their own healthcare.

Too often, patients leave the doctor's office with a diagnosis and a recommendation—but without a meaningful discussion about the full range of choices available to them.

What are the potential risks and benefits?
Are there alternatives?
What does the evidence actually show?
What happens if you choose not to proceed?
And is doing nothing a reasonable option?

The INFORMED Podcast explores these questions and challenges the idea that being a good patient simply means doing what you're told.

Pam and Heidi encourage you to become the patient who asks questions, requests the evidence, examines the clinical data, understands the risks and benefits, and insists on having a meaningful conversation before making a healthcare decision.

Because informed consent isn't simply about signing a form. It's about having the information you need to make a decision.

Through conversations with physicians, researchers, health educators, advocates, authors, and people with compelling personal experiences, Pam and Heidi explore what informed consent in medicine should look like—and why it matters.

If you've ever left a doctor's office thinking:

“I wonder if I have other options?”
“I still have so many questions.”
“What are the potential side effects of this drug?”
“What does the evidence actually say?”

The INFORMED Podcast was made for you.

We invite you to listen, ask questions, think critically, and most importantly, get INFORMED!