Think and Act Patient Learning

This book discusses how patients learn about their illnesses and aims at supporting healthcare students and professionals to understand and respond better to the learning needs of patients.

Focusing on how patients absorb and retain health information, it promotes person-centred care in order that patients can participate more meaningfully in their treatment and care. Frequently, patients are expected to grasp a massive amount of information in a short period of time, when they may already be feeling stressed and overwhelmed, in order to participate in their care. Rather than focusing on the process of giving information, this book pays attention to how information is received, understood and acted on by the people who need it. It helps healthcare practitioners to develop the pedagogical skills they need to successfully support patients’ understanding, skills and competencies to manage their self-care, health and wellbeing. Developing a new theoretical framework and an accompanying toolbox of practical strategies, it brings together the concepts of:

• Salutogenesis – keeps the reader’s focus on what causes and maintains health, rather than disease
• Sense of Coherence – which refers to how a person copes when they are ill, looking especially at ideas about comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness
• Learning During Illness – describes what and how patients learn and their experiences related to theories and concepts of learning
• Health Literacy – an ability to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information in a way that promotes health

Offering new perspectives on how patients can be supported to cope with their illnesses and including authentic case studies, this text is an important read for nurses, doctors and allied health professionals who are concerned with patient learning, health education, health promotion, health literacy and person-centred care.