Homepage " Publications " Polish publications " Health education as a method to improve therapeutic programme delivery

Health education as a method to improve therapeutic programme delivery

14 December 2022

The patient's understanding of the meaning of diagnostic and therapeutic actions promotes their acceptance and generally improves the effectiveness of treatment. In health education, it is important that the recipients are taught about the health decision-making process with its consequences, but they should not be dictated what decisions they should make. In this way, the recipient becomes a partner in the learning process. Among the methods of education are: thorough patient instruction (verbal instructions, written information, curricula); increased patient contact and counselling (automated telephone, computer-supported monitoring and counselling, telephone follow-ups, interaction with patients' families); various ways to improve the convenience of treatment (health care and on-site drug supply, simplified drug dosing); increasing patients' involvement in self-monitoring; 'reminders' (adapting medication regimen to patients' daily habits, special packaging of medicines, reminding patients of follow-up appointments and the need to refill medicines); other measures to improve cooperation or reward patients for improving adherence and treatment effectiveness (e.g. adjusting the frequency of visits, partial payment of the cost of blood pressure measuring devices). Regardless of which mode of education is implemented, experience to date shows the need to review the methods used and possibly to vary them, taking into account the patient's perceptual capacity. Effective health education in patients after myocardial infarction is extremely difficult. The effectiveness of this process depends on many modifiable and non-modifiable factors. Perhaps combining different educational methods that form a coherent whole, while improving educational tools and strengthening patient motivation will allow better results to be achieved.

https://journals.viamedica.pl/folia_cardiologica/article/viewFile/23679/18865