Chronically ill patients and adherence: a new challenge for educators committed to training future health professionals

As academic educators committed to training future health professionals, we should understand and address the new educational needs they may perceive as a result of the global increase in the number of chronically ill patients. This paper aims to present a new learning/teaching strategy that has been implemented in a bachelor course for health professionals, based on the evidence of: a) the complexity of the issue of therapeutic adherence; b) the lived experience of chronic illness as a personal matter; c) the usefulness of therapeutic patient education (TPE) conceived only as a transmissive practice. In this course, some lectures were combined with workshops in which students were asked to deal with a real patient's story for whom they had to define an educational plan. The results show the success of the creative choices implemented from a training perspective and the satisfaction of the learners asked to experiment in the classroom a work practice with a high rate of autonomy.