title: Therapeutic patient education in heart failure: do studies provide sufficient information about the educational programme?
abstract: Therapeutic patient education programmes on heart failure have been widely proposed for many years for heart failure patients, but their efficiency remains questionable, partly because most articles lack a precise programme description, which makes comparative analysis of the studies difficult. To analyse the degree of precision in describing therapeutic patient education programmes in recent randomized controlled trials. Three major recent recommendations on therapeutic patient education in heart failure inspired us to compile a list of 23 relevant items that an 'ideal' description of a therapeutic patient education programme should contain. To discover the extent to which recent studies into therapeutic patient education in heart failure included these items, we analysed 19 randomized controlled trials among 448 articles published in this field from 2005 to 2012. The major elements required to describe a therapeutic patient education programme were present, but some other very important pieces of information were missing in most of the studies we analysed: the patient's educational needs, health literacy, projects, expectations regarding therapeutic patient education and psychosocial status; the educational methodology used; outcomes evaluation; and follow-up strategies. Research into how therapeutic patient education can help heart failure patients will be improved if more precise descriptions of patients, educational methodology and evaluation protocols are given by authors, ideally in a standardized format.
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Centre, University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria Grazia
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Albano
authors.affiliation: Heart Failure Department, CHR René Dubos, Pontoise and TPE Department, Paris Descartes University, Paris, France. Electronic address: patrick.jourdain-mantel@wanadoo.fr.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jourdain
authors.affiliation: Health Education Laboratory EA 3412, University Paris 13, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: De Andrade
authors.affiliation: Health Education Laboratory EA 3412, University Paris 13, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Aukse
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Domenke
authors.affiliation: CHU Georges-Pompidou, AP-HP, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Desnos
authors.affiliation: Health Education Laboratory EA 3412, University Paris 13, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: d'Ivernois
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D005260:Female; D057220:Health Literacy; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D010359:Patient Readmission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D015397:Program Evaluation; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods; D013664:Teaching Materials
keywords: Description of programmes; Heart failure; Insuffisance cardiaque; Literature review; Précision des programmes; Revue de littérature; Therapeutic patient education; Éducation thérapeutique du patient