Participating in patient education:a status passage in life?

The paper builds on previous ethnographic research in Denmark focusing on the significance of participating in a locally developed patient education programme for everyday life (Kristiansen et.al. 2015). It presents a secondary analysis. Group based patient education can be understood as a health promoting initiative. It is set up to regularize and help people manage the status passage from being a normal person to becoming a person living with chronic illness and to support them in accepting and learning to live with this identity transition. The theory of status passage and the concept of turning point is applied in order to illustrate two central status passages taking place at the locally developed patient education programme: 1) The status passage from novice to an experienced person with chronic illness, and 2) The transformation from adolescence to adulthood living with a chronic illness. Related to both status passages we analyse how the central properties of status passage are at play and how they are shaped by the social interactions among the different agents: participants, lay experts and health professionals.We discuss how the theory of status passage might further enrich empirical studies within the field of patient education and how it can enhance our understanding of the social practices at play and the identity transitions occurring as a result of the chronic illness itself and the participation at the programme. Further we reflect on potential practical implications of our findings.