Toward a Framework for Patient Education: An Analysis of Enablement

Patient education is an activity that nurses engage in on a regular basis, yet in the literature it is seldom examined as a patient-centered process. The desire to describe the process of patient education in terms that were not content-driven was the guiding force for an examination of the concept of enablement. The purpose of this article is to describe an analysis that resulted in a definition of enablement and the identification of three components: means, abilities, and opportunities. Model, related, and contrary cases are provided. The findings of this examination are used to propose a potential framework for designing, implementing, and evaluating patient education across content areas.