\u201cTherapeutic patient education (TPE) in stroke survivors: defining usual care and preliminary data of a self-management program (LAY- Look After Yourself-)

Therapeutic Patient Education (TPE) is an educational process that enable patients to acquire and maintain abilities to optimally manage their lives with their condition. It is patient-centred and it includes: organized awareness, information, self-care learning and psychosocial support. It is designed to help patients and their families understand the disease and treatments, cooperate with health-care providers, live healthily and maintain or improve quality of life (QoL). It should also contribute to reducing the cost of long-term care to patients and society. The Stanford Patient Education Research Center set up a wide variety of TPE interventions for people with chronic conditions (CDSMP, arthritis, diabetes, pain, HIV\u2026) supported by literature. Guidelines recommed to include TPE in stroke care to improve self-management (SM) and there is some evidence that self-efficacy is an important variable associated with various post-stroke outcomes (QoL, depression, ADL, physical functioning). Goal-setting, individualized approach and professional support may also be common strategies between SM programs and the rehabilitation process. Nevertheless, until now in literature there is a large variability in type, timing, contents and setting of these interventions and the optimal format for stroke survivors is still not clear: further studies are needed