New areas of theory development and practice in patient education

Patient education, which is central to nursing practice, is evolving as a body of theory and in its application to groups of clients. This paper outlines a new body of theory known as self-efficacy theory, which has considerable potential to improve patient outcomes from teaching. This theory posits that patient belief that he can perform a necessary behaviour (self-efficacy) can be affected by four principal sources of information: performance attainments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and perceived physiological states. This paper also describes new applications of patient education for psychiatric patients and notes the potential for the expanded educational services for geriatric patients. These programmes have the potential to save hospital costs and to improve quality of life but appear to be in early stages of programme development. Active development and management of a field's theory base and practice applications is fragmented in the patient education field but important to the field's continued relevance and vigour.