“Patient Coaching” Volume II published

04.07.2012 10:18

At the end of June, the second volume of the book “Patient Coaching” by the German Society for Citizen-Oriented Care Management (DGbV) eV was published. Together with the first volume, it forms a coherent work that is "forward-looking" for patient coaching.

The two volumes cover four areas of competence for patient coaching: methodological competence, social competence, specialist competence for understanding medical contexts and field competence, orientation in the health system.

Volume 2, which has now been published, has two focuses: 1. The necessary knowledge of a patient coach about medical contexts, the healthcare system as well as the legal and ethical dimensions of patient coaching. 2. Contributions to promoting quality of care, cost-effectiveness, patient safety and transparency in patient coaching.

The focus of the content is the training recommendations for patient coaches, which provide for modular, usually part-time training with different qualification levels: basic qualification, specialization and the possibility of a bachelor's degree course. There are also checklists for classifying and measuring the success of patient coaching offers, with which the quality of structure, processes and results can be made verifiable, transparent and comparable using indicators. They are published for the first time in this volume.

According to the DGbV, “patient coaching provides “valuable suggestions and working principles” for everyone who is interested in the implementation and quality assurance of patient coaching as a success factor in health care management.