Éducation thérapeutique et santé publique : questions croisées

Abstract

In France, the law now recognizes the Therapeutic Patient Education (TPE) and this shows the long road TPE accomplishes since the very first educational programs in oncology, the disease learning for children with chronic pathologies and the dramatic changes obtained by the patients with AIDS, placing the patients in the heart of the processes. As any educational program, TPE aims to enforce patients’ skills in managing its disease and getting more autonomy. This also implies to consider problems such as the time discordance between periods of care, time of disease evolution, social and family time and patient's own perception of time. It also focuses on failures in consistency in patient's lifetime and care process, educational and medical counter-attitudes. Focusing on skills transfer helps also to understand the question of TPE assessment, the main objective remaining to help the patient to live the best possible life in his social context. The development of TPE with concepts such as self – management and therapeutic alliance shows the increasing importance of patients’ empowerment in health care.