Knowledge Gap In Patients: A Literature Review

All 22 articles which were included in this review have shown that patient education significantly improves the outcome and quality of life in a patient in several ways by diminishing the patients knowledge gap (7) - (28). A knowledge gap in patients is defined as the missing or misunderstood information patients have about their condition.

Education improves medication and treatment adherence (10), (13), (24), the quality of self-management (12), (16), (20), (21), (26), (27), awareness of the disease the patient suffers from (7) - (28) and even the emotional status (15), (19), (22), (25). This all might be done by dint of the end-products which aim to fill the knowledge gap and in turn stimulate the motivation of a patient and promote the

On the other hand the reviewed articles all have comparable results and are directed towards the same direction, namely the necessity to implement patient education as milestone in medical practice.

The quality of evidence of the included articles varied. One article from 2001 (7) is considerably older than the rest of the articles which were published between 2015 and 2017 (8) - (28). Most of the articles have a reasonable number of participants or references (12), (13), (16) - (20), (23), (26), (28) but some are based on small, not necessarily representative sample sizes (8) - (11), (14), (15), (21), (22), (24), (25), (27).

Remarkably most conclusions in the chosen articles have shown significant results in the reduction of knowledge gaps in patients by patient education but they also recommend further research to determine the importance and greatest effect of education in clinical practice especially in the long term (8) -

In addition they can even contact the administrators to ask their questions directly. Sharing their own story or reading shared stories is another advantage and might be considered as a new form of group intervention.

This review has shown that evidence exists that patient education is efficient in improving the outcome of patients. Mainly it was focused on chronic conditions or their consequences (6), (9) - (14), (16), (18) - (21), (24), (26) - (28). The end-products might be useful tools to accomplish these improvements since they provide effective forms of education.

Further studies should be conducted focusing on aspects like the influence of patient education in short-term diseases or in the prophylaxis of complications of diseases.

In addition there is a necessity to research if there is a significant difference whether a physician or nurse provides the information. Moreover it is important, especially for the brochure, to determine the best setting to give information for example a waiting room, where patients can grab the information themselves or actively being consulted by the physician, to optimize the effect of educational