Kathy Kastner’s Person Centered Patient Education Best Practice Guidelines

Posted in Blog: Whose health is it anyway? Seen and heard on June 20, 2010 by kathy

In 2006, I launched an initiative, Patient Education Best Practice Guidelines. Participants in the first Organization Teleconference were from all the standards-setting organizations, along with Patient Safety and Health Literacy. That was before electronic media fully liberated and made accessible huge amounts of information and enabled communities of interest.

Now, I humbly put forward– for augmentation and discussion – the skeleton of Person-Centered Patient Education Best-Practice Guidelines. My principles are based on readiness, respect, reinforcement, and reassurance. Except for ‘readiness’ , the order matters less than the outcome.

Kathy Kastner’s Person-Centered Patient-Education Best Practice Guidelines

If at all possible:

1. Make sure I’m ready to hear it.

2. Acknowledge that I’m being asked to/ will become my own expert (without benefit of medical/scientific training) and that amounts to a huge accomplishment.

3. When I’m ready, offer me a choice of hearing and learning:

What I need to know – making sure I, or my caregiver(s)fully understand What would be ‘nice’ to know What would be nuts to know

4. Ask what kind of learner I am and accommodate as best as possible

5. Give me direction on back-up support/information/education: Web sites (specifics of site) Forums Blogs YouTube

6. Encourage me to share with my community, gather their questions and clarifications and schedule a follow-up appointment

7. Address my and my community’s hopes expectations goals

a. Revisit regularly, and acknowledge confusion, information overload, fear and denial.

8. Ensure I feel able (knowledge, emotions, resources) to have meaningful input into my care-map, so it can be patient-led, within the realities of the system or situation

9. Respect my decision, even if it’s not what you would do, or would recommend.

10. Support my decision, or assign someone who can.

©Kathy Kastner

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Comments (17 Comments)

physician assistant
June 22, 2010

this post is very usefull thx!
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July 5, 2010

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July 16, 2010

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July 20, 2010

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Kathy Kastner’s Person Centered Patient Education Best Practice Guidelines: Continued | Ability 4 Life
July 25, 2010

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Sheba Muturi
September 24, 2010

These are excellent points that address the often overlooked “how” human side rather than the “what” content. I have only a couple of comments.

Are these patient “communication” or “education” guidelines? It seems to me that these address patient-healthprovider communication rather than education which is broader and not as personalized – eg the plain language consumer resources you address in point 5.

1) Make sure I’m ready to hear it: How does a health professional determine this? By asking the patient? There’s probably some readiness scale somewhere for addressing this issue particularly in patients diagnosed with very serious conditions. Clarity about this is important because some health professionals may use this as an easy cop-out of really important conversations with patients.

4)Ask what kind of learner I am and accommodate. A link to more info on learning styles would be useful as not all patients know what kind of learners they are.

Finally, I am not sure which point this falls under but many healthcare providers are guilty of not addressing patients directly particularly when there are caregivers involved. They will talk about the patient in third person. They should always clearly address the patient even when there’s a caregiver or translator helping because the patient feels involved and respected.

This is a great post and keep up the good work!
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February 12, 2011

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