Physiotherapists have a unique and expanding role in global health work due to their broad scope of practice. Besides providing direct patient care, pysiotherapists act as educators for example in prevention and management of several diseases and life-style-related conditions, injury prevention, and infection control. This role is related to delivering health information and instructions to clients/patients, which requires extensive communication and suitable communication skills. As a result of the growing sociodemographic changes in Europe, physiotherapists face the challenge to provide care to vulnerable client groups, such as older people, persons with lower socioeconomic status, individuals with migration background and/or language difficulties, and with chronic diseases. These client groups typically show decreased knowledge and motivation to access, understand, and apply health information for taking adequate decisions concerning their own health – a state defined as Health Literacy. Inadequate to problematic health literacy (HL) has been reported in nearly 45% of the European citizens and has been linked to reduced usage of health care services, increased risk of hospitalization and to higher healthcare costs. The client groups with lower HL require individual therapeutic and communication approach provided by physiotherapists. To respond to these requirements, physiotherapists need to acquire solid HL competencies during their higher education. The bachelor physiotherapy (PT) programs in most EU member states do not adequately consider the role of the physiotherapist as a patient educator. The HL competencies offered in the PT study programs are insufficient to respond to the clients’ needs. The demand for HL competencies will increase further along with the growing number of the elderly population, chronic disease patients and people with migration background. The project, “Health Literacy in Physiotherapy Education” (HELPE) addresses the health literacy in the PT education. The objective is to develop the HL competencies of bachelor physiotherapy students in the partner higher education institutions (HEIs), adequately adapted to the needs of the various client groups. A further aim is to enable the PT students to understand their own role and responsibility as patient educator and to increase the HL understanding among students, educational and PT professionals and clients. This can be achieved by developing shared knowledge of HL competencies and continuous curriculum development work. First, partners develop a HL Framework based on the current state of the art to ensure high standard scientific background for the project outcomes. Second, integrating the specific expertise of participating HEIs, facilitates partners to develop teaching and training contents. These HL contents will be integrated in the PT courses of each partner institution. Third, partners evaluate and disseminate the developed knowledge and results into a HL Handbook suitable for use by the target groups. To achieve the defined objectives, an intensive cooperation is planned with the consortium of 5 HEIs: University of Applied Sciences FH-JOANNEUM Graz (AT); University for Health Studies Bochum (hsg, DE); University Ramon Llull Fundacio Barcelone (SP); HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (NL) and JAMK University of Applied Sciences (FIN). PT educators with relevant expertise and PT students with interest in the topic from these institutions will be involved. In addition, PT professionals and selected clients from each partner country will participate in the project. The project offers an opportunity to the educational and PT professionals and to students to cooperate transnationally utilizing co-design, co-creation and digital methods. Joint activities include: research and lecturing, performing training scenarios, developing educational video materials, and course contents on HL, teaching and training possibilities for students and teaching staff. The HELPE project focuses on the following target groups: PT teachers to improve their didactic and research excellence; PT and other health profession students to improve their HL competencies and thus increase their professional qualifications; clients with low HL to improve their HL and digital HL; PT professionals and other health professionals to share best practises; health care organisations to acquire novel working methods to enhance health care quality; health profession higher education sector to improve the education excellence. Partners ensure sustainability, transfer and impact of the project results primarily by renewing the existing PT curricula, but also by using open sources and publishing material subsequently to the project. The HELPE project will increase the awareness of integrating the HL topic in the curricula of other health profession HEIs, which may open further educational and clinical perspectives to a broader international scene.
The project, “Health Literacy in Physiotherapy Education” (HELPE) aimed to develop the HL competencies of physiotherapy students in the partner higher education institutions by developing shared knowledge on HL competencies and by continuous curriculum development work. Further objectives include: enabling the PT students to understand their own role and responsibility as patient educators; enriching the existing curricula with high quality teaching and training HL contents, based on solid scientific background and on the specific expertise of the participating partners; increasing the HL awareness among students, educational and health care professionals and clients, promoting internationalization, research and digital skills in academic staff and students.
Limited health literacy (HL) has been reported in nearly 45% of the European citizens. Limited HL is linked to reduced usage of health care services, to increased morbidity and mortality, and to higher health care costs. Individuals with limited HL require adequate therapeutic and communicative approaches provided by health care professionals and specifically by physiotherapists, who have become more crucial in providing health information to patients. As a result of the growing sociodemographic changes, physiotherapists face the challenge of delivering care to vulnerable client groups, such as older people, persons with lower socioeconomic status, individuals with migration background and/or language difficulties, and those with chronic diseases. To respond to these challenges, physiotherapists need to acquire solid HL competencies during their education. The bachelor physiotherapy (PT) programs in most EU member states do not offer a sufficient number and quality of HL courses and the graduate students are not adequately prepared to meet the demands of clients with limited HL. The project addresses the need of developing HL course contents in PT on a European level.