Patient-centred asthma education in the emergency department: the case against

Abstract

Patient education is based on a delicate balance between a suffering individual and a clinician. This professional is supposed to assume a public service duty falling between institutional requirements and the choices of patients. This task is complicated by one indisputable fact: it is impossible to make people do what one wants them to do. In this situation, the ethic considerations may counterbalance the social values. These principles often try to help people against their own will to make them comply better with the established social order. No study or comparison has been published in the literature about the best location in which the therapeutic education is going to be provided (emergency departments (ED), outpatient clinics, asthma schools, mobile units). No study has specified the relationship between a patient's specific needs and the proposal for a particular location 1. The most recent French guidelines on therapeutic education in asthma state that the ideal location remains the patient's choice 2. Thus, asthmatic patients attending the ED become potential clients of health-education sessions. They are often also “bad clients” and it is commonly said that: “those who are …