Patient education and counseling in the context of modern patient-physician-family communication.

The modern understanding of patient education derives from a robust literature from public health and clinical medicine that started to become empirical and rigorous in the mid-1960s. Patient education is one of three functions of the medical interview, each of which must each be accomplished skillfully if the others are to be maximally effective. This article discusses the new conceptualization of patient education and provides examples of how it works. The rule of patient activation is discussed and implications for future research are presented.