Importance Of Patient Education

Importance of patient education

Patient education (PE) describes a variety of methods to inform the health care consumer (1). Most commonly these methods are used by doctors and nurses to educate patients during hospitalization and shortly before releasing the patient from the hospital. This is especially valuable as patient education is often to be seen as part of the treatment plan and studies suggest that it increases patient compliance and therefore lowers readmittance to the hospital (2, 3). The educational instructions include not only the basic information about the disease, but furthermore what is to be expected after the release, when to seek medical advice and how to conduct proper self-care (3). Patient education might especially

This might be especially relevant to infective endocarditis (IE) as habits like poor dental hygiene or IV drug use increases the risk. To enhance prevention, patients at risk therefore need to be educated in an efficient manner. ( 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

The HBM incorporates different aspects of the individual's attitude and investigates which elements influence the compliance of the patient. To increase the likelihood to change four main components are of importance; the perceived susceptibility, the perceived seriousness, the perceived benefits and the perceived barriers.

The perceived seriousness is an aspect that describes the individual's belief of how serious a disease is. It generally contains the knowledge about the incidence, prevalence, morbidity and mortality of a disease. The awareness of risk factors and risk groups are defined as the perceived susceptibility. Furthermore the perceived barriers describe the obstacles that the patient has to encounter to change their pattern. The perceived benefits, the advantages of changing a habit, need to be of higher value than the perceived barriers. (10,

This includes for example the Dual Code theory. It describes how information can be better memorized if information is being processed through the audible channel in combination with the visual channel, for instance a leaflet combined with the doctor explaining it. Other popular models include the Cognitive Load theory, describing the limits to working memory processing and the Multimedia theory, which discusses the combination of different means to inform the patient.