Integrating patient education into the medical school setting: balancing needs and priorities.

The integration of patient education into the medical school setting is one part of a route to the appropriate inclusion of patient education in the physician's repertoire. Successful integration of patient education into medical education will not be easy and will involve every aspect of patient education: purpose, scope, content, focus, process, setting, evaluation, adaptation to the patient, and incentive for patient and physician. Each element in the process of patient education needs serious and substantial attention. However, as many of the reports of this conference show, we have a considerable base of knowledge and competence albeit not tightly organized or focused or uniformly applied. Further, a part of the knowledge and experience in patient education resides outside the medical school. In my view, physicians will not be the only or even necessarily the best patient educators, but, as a minimum, physicians need sufficient understanding and experience to fill certain selective roles as educators and to interact effectively with others involved in health education of patients