Has patient education changed in the last 50 years?

Posted by NoTime_author in Featured Articles, News on May 2nd, 2010 | one response

Do you think patient education has changed in the last 50 years? A recent paper by Hoving, Visser, Mullen, and van den Borne (2010) answered this question.

They looked at the development of patient education from the 1960s to now. They observed that, in this timeframe, patient education has made several developmental changes, and has spread to different settings in health care. The major change they noted was the move from the health care professional deciding what the patient needed to know to a shared decision making design.

So what did they think was the biggest challenge of the future? “Both patients and health professionals still need to be provided with skills to optimize patient education.” Yes, that’s right. We still don’t know how to teach. And patients don’t know how to learn.

That’s an interesting conclusion, since we have the research that tells us how to teach well. We know how to most effectively and efficiently teach patients and families. The winner in any comparison of two different teaching methods is the one that involves the learner more or the one that individualizes teaching better. We just don’t apply this evidence to practice.

Don’t believe me? Search “involve individualize” (without quotes) in your search engine. The top results refer to education links. Then try searching “involvement individualization” (again, without quotes). Now you’ll get links relating to education and marketing. Because this is how you sell the benefits of behavior change to your patient.

Think about the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy’s red shoes are to Kansas like the book No Time to Teach is to patient education. Dorothy had the way to get home all along. Health care providers have the evidence to teach patients effectively and efficiently.

It’s not an issue of empowerment. They already have the power. They don’t have the information they need to use it. Reading articles like this one on the history of patient education make me wonder. If every health care provider read No Time to Teach, and applied what they learned to practice, could we finally move on? What would the 2060 update of this article reveal?

If we had skills to optimize patient education, how much more effective would health care be? How much healthier would our patients be? How much money could we save? Could we treat more people and have better outcomes using the same level of resources?

Would it help to know No Time to Teach: The Essence of Patient and Family Education for Health Care Providers is on sale until the end of May? Use coupon code: NOTIME. This offer is only good for orders placed through the Pritchett & Hull website by phone (800) 241-4925 or by fax (800) 752-0510.

Isn’t it time for a change?

Source: Hoving, C., Visser, A., Mullen, P. D., & van den Borne, B. (2010). A history of patient education by health professionals in Europe and North America: from authority to shared decision making education. Patient Educ Couns, 78(3), 275-281.