Pratiquer l'éducation thérapeutique du patient après la loi « Hôpital patient santé territoire » : comment passer en pratique d'une action non coordonnée à une offre de soin structurée et une reconnaissance des compétences ?

Patient Education (PE) has developed in France for 20 years, in a nonstructured and noncoordinated way, on the initiative of professionals convinced of the importance of developing such programs to improve the patients' quality of life suffering from chronic disease. Fifteen million patients currently suffer from chronic illnesses and 200,000 new patients are diagnosed each year. The HPST Act (2009) “Hospital, Patients, Health and Territory” promotes PE with Article 84. The willingness of French health system authorities of developing PE is well acted. The Regional Health Agencies (ARS) are in charge of setting up a new organization of healthcare services with target geographic coverage. They will also analyze PE programs that teams may submit. The labelling of these ARS programs will be based on different criteria and requirements defined in the specifications published in the articles of August 2, 2010. One major prerequisite is the multidisciplinary teams animating PE programs. The pharmacist, acting as a public health provider, must now, through appropriate training in PE, enroll in this new way of providing patient care.