Lucia Celesti
Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, Italy
Title: Patient engagement: teenager’s involvement
Biography
Biography: Lucia Celesti
Abstract
Due to the increasing importance of patients’ engagement in the healthcare system, it is essential to make patients aware, educated and proactive. The aim of chronic patients’ therapeutic education is to improve patient’s quality of life making patient able to manage by itself the disease’s progressive development and its related complex medical treatments; enhance efficiency of healthcare process in facing chronic patients changing needs; provide doctor-patient and patient-patient relation with a peer-to-peer tool in the healthcare process. A training course led by psychologists, teachers, healthcare operators, communication professionals, chronic patients already trained, with not only scientific but also communicative skills can be useful. The course would be divided into different session: psychology, specific illness, communication strategies, etc. As results, the number of trained patients, decreased hospitalizations, decreased inappropriate requests to doctors, assessment questionnaires filled by participants, assessment questionnaires filled by those who benefit from counselling service, course completed, activation of a help line service, activation of a counselling centre for chronic patients, involvement of chronic trained patients in the wards can be considered. The patient’s therapeutic education represents a useful tool to foster the patient’s involvement in the healthcare process. A chronic patient trained is more conscious and aware about his/her clinic and psychophysical conditions and more able to adapt his/her everyday-needs to disease’s evolution. Therefore, the patient becomes protagonist of his/her healthcare and keen to collaborate with healthcare professionals, social services and his/her community of reference with a peer-to-peer approach.