'Effective patient education is an art'

Michael Mawhinney discusses why you need to recognise patients as experts too

At the All Together Better Health conference on interprofessional practice and education held earlier this year, I was struck by a presentation on the care of terminally ill children. The speaker referred to health professionals’ interactions with parents as conversations between experts – health professionals are experts in healthcare delivery, parents are experts in managing their children.

The expert patients programme is a well-known intervention for patients with long-term conditions (Wilson et al 2007), but I had not considered viewing my patients as experts while receiving anti-cancer treatments.

As a nurse administering anti-cancer treatments for more than 6 years, I have developed the skills I first learned in delivering patient education into a well-rehearsed and thorough agenda. But this does not