A home ventilation health care education program for patient empowerment

Abstract

A pilot program designed to facilitate patients requiring ventilatory support to return home, was developed through a Montreal based hospital. One year after the inception of this pilot program, this study was undertaken to evaluate what role, if any, patient empowerment played in the successful reintegration of this clientele back into their community. Six patients which underwent the transition from hospital respiratory services to home care services were interviewed regarding their experience. Semi-structured interviews were done on 3 female patients and 3 male patients, all with degenerative neuromuscular diseases at different levels of onset and severity. The subjects were asked to describe their experience with the Home Ventilation Program in terms of empowerment with a specific emphasis on the educational programs. Overall the results indicated that the experience was a very positive one. All the subjects interviewed described feeling empowered by the Home Ventilation Program in one way or another. Five main categories of empowerment emerged from the data. They are: empowerment through Advocacy, Consent, Education, Choice and Accommodation with Advocacy being the most predominant theme. All six patients reported a high degree of satisfaction with the services offered as well as an increase in their quality of life as a direct result of these services. The results of the study imply that educational programs which serve to prepare patients for their own care are more apt to be successful if empowerment strategies are an inherent part of the program.