[Patient education in rheumatology-The current situation]

The article summarizes the state of the art in patient education in rheumatology and describes the goals that have been reached and the problems that have to be solved in the future. Within recent years 6 patient education programs have been developed, 4 additional programs are in progress. Evaluation studies have been conducted for 3 programs showing evidence for the efficacy of patient education in different fields. Furthermore quality standards for patient education in rheumatology have been worked out and train-the-trainer-seminars are held regularly. Most of the activities in patient education take place in inpatient settings because of the lack of financial support for patient education courses in outpatient settings. Therefore future efforts have to concentrate on negotiations with health insurance companies to obtain money for running comprehensive outpatient education courses overall in Germany.