Introduction: The educational therapeutic pact family-healthcare represents an important tool in order to share different kinds of knowledge of people involved in the care process: the knowledge which comes from family experiences, is not scientific but related to here and now, specific and personal, and healthcare professional workers knowledge which is scientific, standardized, based on statistical results, not personalized.
Materials and methods: narrative medicine and parents pedagogy are used as methodologies to collect the stories of people and families through the application of educational therapeutic pact family – healthcare. The ICF is an important tool to underline the personal factors which qualify the care and life process of the patients.
Conclusions: the patients and his/her family have need to be listened to and respected with dignity for what they are and what they do.
It exists in literature a huge bibliography about each method but we are not informed about similar experiences. To integrate the methods to take in charge the patient and his/her family in a holistic way represents a new challenge which, if it is well organized, will be able to obtain very positive results.
To introduce, as a working tool, the relatives, parents and patients’ descriptions, who I was and who I am today, what I was doing and I am doing today etc allows the health professional workers to identify that type of care which is closer to the patient characteristics. The empowerment of the patient is a clue word concerning several health politics and programs. We need work tools and methods. Our experience could represent one of the working methods even though we need to carry on other researches and direct experiences.
In 2011 a new project starts which aims to create a training path for the healthcare professional workers in order to acquire narrative knowledge for the definition of educational therapeutic pact.
http://heppy.fadgradenigo.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=105
The partners involved in the project are: Gradenigo Hospital of Turin, Italy (coordinator), Confederacion Espanola de Centros de Ensenanza of Spain, Italian Confederation for health promotion and health education of Turin, Italy, Pixel Association of Florence, IT, Lithuanian Multiple Sclerosis Union of Lithuania, Academy of Humanities and econimics of Lodz, Polond, Economic Centre for Business Consultancy and Management of Romania, Transfer Slovensko of Slovakia.