A Theory-Driven, Evidence-Based Approach to Implementing the ISPD Syllabus—Patients as Learners

Abstract

The International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis (ISPD) Nursing Liaison Committee published a syllabus (1) for teaching peritoneal dialysis (PD) to patients or caregivers. The implementation of this ISPD syllabus into clinical practice could improve patient care, experience, and safety for patients on PD assuming the educational benefits transfer across different care contexts (2). The recommendation to embed a “syllabus” for such a purpose is more fundamentally an opportunity for healthcare professionals (HCPs) in nephrology to also step back and evaluate the effectiveness of existing approaches for delivering patient education in healthcare, i.e. to ensure the best chance of translating benefits to patients. Traditional approaches to patient education generally result in teaching or training that involves experts “telling patients about their condition” (3–5). Yet medical education more broadly is evolving and giving more attention to evidencebased methods for the training and teaching of healthcare professionals. So too could these methods be used to bring benefit in educating patients (6–10). Given the fundamental purpose of any education is to increase the knowledge of individuals about themselves and, in the case of patients, increase their understanding of their disease (11–13), there is a growing case to adopt evidence-based teaching and learning activities to the education of patients. This paper aims to provide healthcare professionals with theory-driven, evidence-based teaching approaches to effectively implement the ISPD syllabus. It supports clinicians to make better choices about patient education interventions. We also attempt to debunk some educational myths associated with teaching and learning, so individual teachers can be better informed about what works, for whom, when, and in what context.