Patient education policy and practice in Australian hospitals.

In Australia little is known of the quality and range of patient education programs or their level of support. A national survey was conducted to establish a baseline of the number of programs being conducted, the level of administrative support and the sophistication of practice. This survey shows that most hospitals in Australia conduct some patient education programs. Teaching and metropolitan public hospitals conduct the most, 95% and 88%, respectively, private hospitals the least, 47%. The programs conducted mainly cover chronic health problems such as diabetes (80% of all hospitals offering programs), heart disease (52%) and cancer (36%). The main reason given for not conducting education programs is lack of trained staff (59%). Of the programs which are conducted only half are planned. Most of the hospitals surveyed had few of the administrative components found to be necessary to support planned, patient education programs. The two most common administrative components were documentation in patient notes (48% of hospitals conducting programs) and a resource center (34%).