Personalized Patient Education and the Internet: Linking health information to the Electronic Patient Record (STEPPS in burn care)

Abstract

For patients and their carers, information seeking and processing is an integral part of managing disease or coping with a health condition. The nature and content of that information may vary widely; from general medical knowledge, to practical details on diagnosis and treatment options and to very specific questions addressing own concerns. Healthcare professionals have been perceived and e}..'Pected to function as the main information resource for patients, as well as for their families and caregivers. More formally, the process of information provision by healthcare professionals has become known as health or patient education [ 1]. The term health education however, has been most often connected with interventions that target a particular behavior change, for the purposes of preventing the onset or the complications of a disease or condition. Patient education on the other hand, has been primarily concerned with providing patients and their caregivers with the necessary information and skills to better manage an existing disease or condition. It is this latter type of information provision activities that are the focus of this thesis.