science

Patient education

Patient education is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Patient education rather than just read about it. In short: Patient education is a planned interactive learning process designed to support and enable expert patients to manage their life with a disease and/or optimise their health and well-being. Overview Education may be provided by any healthcare professional who has undertaken appropriate training education, education on patient communication and education is usually included in the healthcare professional's training.

Key takeaways

Patient education belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Patient education to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Patient education from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Patient education is a planned interactive learning process designed to support and enable expert patients to manage their life with a disease and/or optimise their health and well-being.

Overview Education may be provided by any healthcare professional who has undertaken appropriate training education, education on patient communication and education is usually included in the healthcare professional's training. However, further training is required to develop specialist skills needed to facilitate self-management and behaviour change. Patient education provided by a healthcare professional can often be more effective than other methods such as medication guides. Many institutions are calling for courses in educating medical students in Technical Communication to promote Patient Education and the subsequent benefits thereof. Health education is also a tool used by managed care plans, and may include both general preventive education or health promotion and disease or condition specific education. Some topics proposed in Patient Education courses include Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) and Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) in order to prepare Health educators to create simple and culturally sensitive avenues of communication.

Benefits Important elements of patient education are skill building and responsibility: patients need to know when, how, and why they need to make a lifestyle change. Group effort is important: each member of the patient's health care team needs to be involved. It can also help the patients by a better lifestyle, it gives them the ability to learn new information. The value of patient education can be summarized as follows:

Improved understanding of medical condition, diagnosis, disease, or disability. Improved understanding of methods and means to manage multiple aspects of medical condition. Improved self-advocacy in deciding to act both independently from medical providers and in interdependence with them. Improved initiative in voicing concerns over medication delivery, risks, and dosages with a physician. Improve trust between a patient and their provider through effective and clear communication. Increased adherence – Effective communication and patient education increases patient motivation to adhere to treatments. Patient outcomes – Patients more likely to respond well to their treatment plan – fewer complications. Informed consent – Patients feel you've provided the information they need to make informed decisions Empowered to make shared decision - Patients understanding of the evidence of benefits and risks of interventions, helps them to truly weigh the trade-offs they are (un)willing to make. Increased health literacy and confidence to navigate the health systems. Utilization – More effective use of medical services – fewer unnecessary phone calls and visits. Satisfaction and referrals – Patients more likely to stay with your practice and refer other patients. Risk Management – Lower risk of malpractice when patients have realistic expectations. Race and health – Target education to help reduce the disproportionate burden on populations at increase risk of mortailty.

Health Educators The competencies of a health educator include the following:

Incorporate a personal ethic in regards to social responsibilities and services towards others. Provide accurate, competent, and evidence-based care. Practice preventive health care. Focus on relationship-centered care with individuals and their families. Incorporate the multiple determinants of health when providing care. Be culturally sensitive and be open to a diverse society. Use technology appropriately and effectively. Be current in the field and continue to advance education.

Outcomes There are many areas where patient education can improve the outcomes of treatment.

For example, in patients with amputations, patient education has been shown to be effective when approached from all angles by the healthcare team (nurse, primary care physician, prosthetist, physical therapist, occupational therapist etc.). Support groups have been shown to be a helpful method for dealing with depression in this population. Preoperative patient education helped patients with their decision-making process by informing them of factors related to pain, limb loss, and functional restriction faced after amputation. In the case of arthritis, patient education was found to be administered through three methods, including individual face to face meetings with healthcare professionals, patient groups, online support programs. Category I evidence was found for individual, face to face counselling. Meeting with rheumatologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, nurses, and other healthcare providers was found to be effective in creating adherence to treatment, medication, and for improving overall patient health. In the case of rheumatoid arthritis, patient education has been shown as an effective non-pharmacological treatment. It is recommended that patient education should be the start point and underpin all self-management interventions. The role of patient organisations in providing support and structured guidance for people with arthritis is widely valued by professionals and patients. It is important to consider patient factors that may help improve outcomes of patient education patient. These are patient activation, illness perceptions, anxiety, participants' knowledge about their condition, engagement with routine check-ups and positive health behaviours. These factors may be also be targets for patient education.

See also Expert Patient Programme Compliance (medicine) Cultural competence in healthcare Green prescription Managed care Medical writing Orem model of nursing

Footnotes

References Cordier JF. The expert patient: towards a novel definition. Eur Respir J. 2014 Oct;44(4):853-7. doi: 10.1183/09031936.00027414. PMID 25271227 Doak, C. C., Doak, L. G., & Root, J. H. (1996). Teaching patients with low literacy skills [1] London, F. (2009). No Time To Teach: The Essence of Patient and Family Education for Health Care Providers. Atlanta: Pritchett & Hull Rankin, S. H., Stallings, K. D., & London, F. (2005). Patient Education in Health and Illness (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Bastable, S.B, Grambet, P., Jacobs, K., Sopczyk, D.L. (2011). Health professionals as educator: Principles of teaching and learning. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Patient education

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Patient education claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Patient education before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Patient education ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Patient education

In research: Patient education appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Patient education in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Patient education is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Health education, Patient, Public health education, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Patient education outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Patient education in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Patient education means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Patient education out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Patient education in simple terms?

Patient education is a planned interactive learning process designed to support and enable expert patients to manage their life with a disease and/or optimise their health and well-being. Overview Education may be provided by any healthcare professional who has undertaken appropriate training educa…

Why does Patient education matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Patient education?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Patient education.