A model for assessing patient education

Patient education is becoming a more visible activity. The Michigan Hospital Association and the Michigan state health planning and resource development agency (Office of Health and Medical Affairs) agreed to jointly pursue a patient-education project to determine its effectiveness. The overall goal of the project is to determine generically what constitutes a quality hospital-based patient-education program. This paper focuses on the development of a model for assessing patient-education programs. Through a multistep process 18 criteria were ultimately selected to serve for patient-education assessment. An analysis and description of the utility of the criteria is presented. The need for establishing and maintaining quality in patient-education programs has been established. The criteria developed for the project offer the potential of meeting this need.