Patient education allows patients to play a bigger role in their own care. It also corresponds with the growing movement toward patient- and family-centred care.

One of the most important roles nurses have today is patient education. This used to be the role of the physician, but today nurses gain more and more responsibility for educating patients and helping them to become responsible for their own health status. Patients need to be active in their own health care. This means they need to understand their health status and prevent or minimize complications from any chronic illnesses.

Patient education needs to be easily understood. Health educators (nurses) should be aware that a lot of patients are health care illiterate. They are not able to understand health care information and what they need to do with that information.

Hospital nurses can best educate patients by understanding that discharge planning begins with admission. Nurses have to ensure patients are effectively educated throughout their stay in hospital so that they are prepared to care for themselves and don’t return for the same issue. Spending the last 20 minutes of a hospital stay discussing the patient’s illness and follow up care is not adequate. Handing the patients materials to read on their way home is ineffective.

Without proper education patients will return home and come back to their previous life style until another episode. Preventing re-hospitalization is a huge responsibility for all medical professionals. Educating patients helps to improve the outcomes and lowers the cost of medical care.

Before starting patient education consider the following: