Educational activities

Empowering Patient Education programme provides education for international and Finnish master and PhD students in nursing and health sciences as well as for health care professionals working in nursing practice. The education includes Empowering Patient Education (EPE) Course (5-25 ECTS). The international EPE course has been annual since 2008 and it contains five modules.

Professor emerita Helena Leino-Kilpi and professor Sanna Salanterä won the Producer of Learning Material Award from the Faculty of Medicine in 2012 for the EPE Course.

Aims

The course aims at describing the theoretical and methodological basis for empowering patient education from the perspectives of the patient, personnel, health care organization and society, deepening understanding of analyzing and implementing and doing research on empowering patient education, and making judgments about empowering patient education in clinical settings and research.

Course description

5 interactive modules from 4 September to 13 December 2023.

Online modules 1 – 4

• Module 1: Orientation and conceptual basis of empowering patient education (obligatory, 5 ects, 4 – 17 September)
• Module 2: Diagnostics in empowering patient education (5 ects, 18 September – 8 October)
• Module 3: Patient education as an empowering patient education intervention (5 ects, 9 – 29 October)
• Module 4: Evaluation of empowering patient education (5 ects, 30 October – 12 November)

Module with an intensive period in Turku, Finland

• Module 5: Special issues in empowering patient education research (5 ects, 13 November – 13 December)
  • an intensive period in Turku, Finland on 11-13 December 2023

Free for students in master and PhD programmes. Price for others: 500 €.

The application time for the 2023 course opens in the spring of 2023. Please follow this site to find the exact application deadline.

The brochure of the EPE Course 2022

Study guide

Contact information: Heli Virtanen, Docent, hetuvi(a)utu.fi

Student comments

Some comments from previous EPE course participants who have been from various countries, for example:

Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, USA

Theoretical issues

“I thought the course would be only on the concept of empowerment. I have been very positively surprised.”
“This knowledge significantly expanded my understanding of EPE. During this course I got some good ideas to my own research.”
“I think I need more information about methods/strategies used in empowering patient education.”
“The lecture about outcomes of empowering patient education is so important that it should be longer.”

Learning issues

“Course challenged my academic thinking and expanded my command of knowledge.”
“The learning happened during the lectures and discussions. Deep learning happened every day when we were present here.”
“It opened my head for new ideas, new perspectives in patient care. Thnak you for offering the course!”
“Corresponded exactly with my gods. This is the kind of learning that is claiming in my country.”
“My institute of nursing science and my hospital do not have structured programs in patient education, but the Department of Nursing Science of University of Turku has a very strong expertise in it.”
“Learning takes of writing a review. I learned a lot!! Really effective. Very good – very supported.”
“I developed a lot of ideas but they are circle around in a confusion manner in my brain and I still hope to get my patient education program designed.”

Practical issues

“All was executed according to the plan. As a foreign student I got information and plans about lodging and the University.”
“An excellent course, highly organised with excellent resources provided”
“Excellent to have everything on Moodle (literature, presentations)”
“Education environment Moodle was used and it was very useful forum for communicating with other students and stuff.”
“It was easy to contact the lecturers and the Professors of the Department of Nursing Science. They responded quickly if I had some problems.”

International collaboration issues

“We got to know each other very well. I liked very much that there were also international students. It was nice to go together for dinner and so on.”
“There has planned specific moments to the course that we could interact with other students.”
“Very much good-will between students from different countries – helpfulness and friendliness”
“The group came very close.”

EPE Theme Day (Potilasohjauksen teemapäivä) is an annual, free webinar in Finnish providing recent research findings in the field of empowering patient education and diverse perspectives on patient education. The theme day is targeted at health and social care professionals and students, researchers in health sciences, patients and their significant others, and anyone who is interested in empowering patient education.

The next EPE Theme Day will be on 23 May 2023. The program will be published in spring 2023.

Past EPE Theme Days:

• Potilasohjauksen teemapäivä – Voimavaraistumisen tuki hoitotyön käyttöön, 12 May 2022, Johan Haartman lecture hall, TYKS, Turku, Finland
• Potilasohjauksen teemapäivä: Tieto potilaan voimavarana – Tutkimustietoa potilasohjaukseen, 10 May 2021, online

Contact information: Saija Inkeroinen, Doctoral researcher, saanin(a)utu.fi

The course aims at developing empowering patient education in health care practice. The teaching methods include lectures, supervision meetings and completion of written patient education material. The students develop written empowering patient education material for their own unit.  The education is designed for health care professionals working in health care practice. Empowering Patient Education programme of the Department of Nursing Science is responsible for teaching. The course is arranged with the Hospital District of Southwest Finland, Satakunta Hospital District and Turku Health Care Services.

For the students taken the Skilled Patient Educator Course, Learning Café events and other social events have been arranged.

Contact information: If you are interested in organizing this course in your organization, please contact professor emerita Helena Leino-Kilpi (helena.leino-kilpi(a)utu.fi) or Doctoral researcher Saija Inkeroinen (saanin(a)utu.fi).

The current practices and new innovations in patient education are presented as well as outcomes of patient education are evaluated in the symposium. The education is designed for health care professionals, leaders, master students and doctoral researchers, teachers and researchers in nursing and health sciences. The symposium is arranged with the Wellbeing services county of Southwest Finland and the Wellbeing services county of Satakunta.

Patient education
Empowering patient education
Researching patient education
Ethics of patient education

Patient education
Orthopaedic nursing
Surgical nursing
Research methods/methodological issues especially surveys
Questionnaire studies
Quasiexperimental and experimental study design

Empowering patient education
Empowering discourse between a patient and a nurse
Learning needs of surgical patient
Requirement of a good written educational material
Evaluation of written patient education material
Learning of patient education in nursing education
Virtual patient simulation in learning of patient education
Computer-assisted simulation in nursing education
Metasummary

Drawings in patient education
Health promotion
Mental health promotion
School health promotion
Empowering adolescents

Patient education
Radiotherapy
E-education of breast cancer patients
Empowering patient education
Health promotion
Knowledge test development
Knowledge test – Feedback

Patient education
Empowering patient education
Orthopaedic Nursing
Day-surgical nursing and Critical care nursing
Knowledge tests
Drawings in patient education

Patient education
Orthopaedic nursing
Follow-up study designs

Teach-back method

Concept mapping method in patient education
The concept mapping method has been originally developed into teaching use for teaching and learning method, and for assessment of learning (Noval 1984). We have used the concept map method in patient and nurse education.
In patient education, the concept map method was studied in preadmission education of orthopaedic patients prior to hospital admission in education discussion. The concept map method seems to be useful in identification of the orthopaedic patient’s previous and current understanding about care-related issues and concentrate to issues on which the patient has no previous knowledge but which are relevant to his/her situation.

Contact person: Kirsi Valkeapää (ex Johansson), Docent, RN, PhD

Publications based on this method:

• Valkeapää, K. (2006). Empowering orthopaedic patients through education. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Series Medica-Odontologica D 728. University of Turku.

Concept mapping method in nurse education
In nurse education, the concept map method was studied as an assessment method of learning of empowering discourse. The method was used so that a student draw a concept map on their knowledge before and after learning session.

Contact person: Heli Virtanen, Docent, PhD, RN

Publications based on this method:

• Virtanen, H., Leino-Kilpi, H., & Salanterä, S. (2016). Nursing students’ knowledge about an empowering discourse: Pretest and posttest assessment. Collegian, 23(3), 293–301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colegn.2015.06.004
• Virtanen H, Leino-Kilpi S & Salanterä S. (2015). Learning about a patient-empowering discourse: testing the use of a computer simulation with nursing students. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice 5 (6), 15–24. https://doi.org/10.5430/jnep.v5n6p15

Publications based on knowledge test method:

• Kesänen, J., Leino-Kilpi, H., Lund, T., Montin, L., Puukka, P., & Valkeapää, K. (2016). The Knowledge Test Feedback Intervention (KTFI) increases knowledge level of spinal stenosis patients before operation-A randomized controlled follow-up trial. Patient Education and Counseling, 99(12), 1984–1991. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2016.07.025
• Kesänen, J., Leino-Kilpi, H., Arifulla, D., Siekkinen, M., & Valkeapää, K. (2014). Knowledge tests in patient education: a systematic review. Nursing & Health Sciences, 16(2), 262–273. https://doi.org/10.1111/nhs.12097
• Siekkinen, M. (2014). Quality of radiotherapy care by development of e-feedback knowledge.

Publications based on drawings in patient education:

• Kesänen, J., Leino-Kilpi, H., Lund, T., Montin, L., Puukka, P., & Valkeapää, K. (2019). Spinal Stenosis Patients’ Visual and Verbal Description of the Comprehension of Their Surgery. Orthopedic Nursing, 38(4), 253–261. https://doi.org/10.1097/NOR.0000000000000572
• Sakellari, E. (2014). Exploring the Impact of Mental Health Education on Adolescents’ Perceptions About Mental Health and Mental Illness. Improving community health.

Publications based on teach-back method:

• Tuominen, L., Ritmala-Castrén, M., Nikander, P., Mäkelä, S., Vahlberg, T., & Leino-Kilpi, H. (2021). Empowering patient education on self-care activity among patients with colorectal cancer – a research protocol for a randomised trial. BMC nursing, 20(1), 94. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-021-00617-z