Current perspectives of therapeutic patient education in Italy

Therapeutic patient education is a well-defined branch of health education aimed at patient empowerment. It consists of helping the patient to underst and his own disease and its treatment, actively collaborating to its fulfil lment and to take care of his own health status in order to maintain and im prove his life quality. The comet implementation of both communication and therapeutic patient education involves the mastery of specific professional skills by healthcare personnel. In Italy, institutional therapeutic patien t education is delivered mainly to diabetic patients. However, other activi ties and projects aimed at therapeutic education of chronic patients are gr adually appearing. An overview of current situation and perspective of ther apeutic patient education practice in Italy are presented. (C) 2001 Elsevie r Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.