Patient education in Switzerland: from diabetes to chronic diseases

The Division of Therapeutic Education for Chronic Diseases at the Universit y Hospital of Geneva has been playing an important role in the field of the rapeutic patient education for more than 25 years. More than 16,000 patient s have bean hospitalised and an excess of 75,000 h have been spent with a r ather novel interdisciplinary approach involving doctors, nurses, dietician s, psychologists, podiatrists and pedagogues. For the past 12 years, our di vision has held over 50 seminars of I-week postgraduate training attended b y over 3000 participants coming from more than 60 countries worldwide. In 1 998, the faculty of medicine at the: University of Geneva implemented a 3-y ear curriculum on therapeutic patient education leading to a postgraduate u niversity diploma. In 1983, the WHO designated the Swiss teaching division as a WHO Collaborating Center for reference and research in diabetes educat ion. In 1998, a WHO-Euro Working Group Report entitled "Therapeutic Patient Education. Continuing education programmes for health care providers in th e field of prevention of chronic diseases" was published. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.