Educación para la salud en Enfermedades Crónicas No Transmisibles: una revisión sistemática

Introduction: Health education is a crucial strategy in the management of Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases. However, it has not been clear how the educational approaches are used or what influence they have on adherence to treatment, the patient’s knowledge of the disease or the challenges that the approaches entail.

Objective: To synthesize the available evidence on the state of health education in some Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases.

Material and Method: A scoping review was conducted to identify health education interventions aimed at people with diabetes mellitus, high blood pressure and coronary heart disease. The SALSA protocol was followed. For the search, the terms “patient education” and “health care” were used in the period 2005 to 2020, in English and Spanish. Original articles were selected and the full texts were reviewed to extract and map the data that was organized in a bibliometric matrix. A narrative synthesis was made.

Results: Four emerging categories were identified: educational strategies, determinants, knowledge and perceptions, and health care models. In general, the approaches used were diverse, but the successful ones were characterized by a personalized approach or in small groups of patients.

Conclusions: Traditionally, health education has been limited to transmitting technical, biomedical information, which makes it difficult for people to understand their disease. Nonetheless, this approach can be counterproductive because it reduces the opportunities for the patient to make decisions about his/her health. Therefore, the instructional design in health education must consider the different learning styles and needs of patients, thus contributing to self-care.