Current perspectives of therapeutic patient education in Italy.

Therapeutic patient education is a well-defined branch of health education aimed at patient empowerment. It consists of helping the patient to understand his own disease and its treatment, actively collaborating to its fulfillment and to take care of his own health status in order to maintain and improve his life quality. The correct implementation of both communication and therapeutic patient education involves the mastery of specific professional skills by healthcare personnel. In Italy, institutional therapeutic patient education is delivered mainly to diabetic patients. However, other activities and projects aimed at therapeutic education of chronic patients are gradually appearing. An overview of current situation and perspective of therapeutic patient education practice in Italy are presented.