Les différents habits de « l'expert profane »

Criticisms of scientific expert and experiences of counter-evaluation from customers' associations led to the concept of “lay expert”. On matter of health, associations of patients with chronic disease have developed the concept of “patient-expert”. Nevertheless, the meaning of this new concept is diverse, including the patient expert of himself, the “resource-patient” chosen by medical teams for a limited cooperation, the patient working for association's expert board, the enlightened customer, and the “patient educator” expert for other patients. These patient educators have to validate theoretical and practical competences in medicine, communication, and psychology. This definition of a new job needs to be clarified with a special thought on the double expertise of doctors or nurses suffering from this chronic disease themselves.