Effective patient education. A quasi-experiment comparing an individualized strategy with a routinized strategy.

A quasi-experiment was conducted on 127 hospitalized rheumatoid arthritis patients to determine the relative success of 3 patient teaching strategies--an individualized program, a routinized program, and a no-planned-instruction program--on patients' knowledge of their disease and treatment. Data analysis revealed that the individualized program produced a 100% greater learning gain than the routinized program in patients who had low pretest scores. The results suggest that maximum patient learning occurs when the teaching process accommodates important patient differences.