Therapeutic education for the Patient

What is therapeutic education for the patient? 

Living with cancer requires multiple daily adaptations. Therapeutic education for the Patient (PTE) allows patients and their loved ones to better understand the disease and the course of care that is ahead of them, as well as the medical environment, how it works, its language, and its culture.

Patient therapeutic education offered at Institut Curie helps patients to:

• Prevent and cope with the side effects of treatments
• Understand the pain mechanisms
• Dare to ask for help and voice their priorities
• Understand how they can adapt their diet 
• Feel ready to return to work
• Find their place in their own intimacy
• Learn non-medication techniques to manage their symptoms

This practice provides support during and after illness, which allows patients to be responsible for taking care of themselves in the medical, social, personal, and professional context.

Therapeutic education at Institut Curie

Institut Curie offers its patients collective or individual therapeutic education workshops, both face-to-face and remote, organized by its Transversal Patient Therapeutic Education Unit (Unité Transversale d’Education Thérapeutique du Patient, UTEP). The workshops are led by caregivers or patient partners who are well informed about the institute.

Institut Curie's UTEP also provides in-house training in therapeutic education for healthcare professionals and manages research projects. Today, this expertise, supported by the Regional Health Authority of France, serves a reference in the deployment of therapeutic education for cancer patients.

The journey at Institut Curie

Therapeutic education is accessible to patients throughout their care.

First, a shared 45-minute educational assessment is carried out to exchange and highlight the difficulties and also supportive measures that the patient may encounter. It makes it possible to take stock of the patient's various needs and to formulate educational objectives in order to define an adapted and personalized support program.

Various adapted resources are offered to patients, in particular, thematic workshops offered at the institute, or through partner associations.

The workshops offered by UTEP address the following topics: 

• The disease
• Side effects of treatments
• Chronic pain
• Diet
• Fatigue
• Sexuality
• Returning to work 

Group sessions are offered to patients in a caring listening and sharing setting between patient partners, caregivers, and patients themselves. Fun tools are used to animate the sessions such as brainstorming, photo-language and drawing.

Institut Curie's UTEP has also set up a specific workshop for caregivers to provide them access to adapted resources.

Support of the patrons 

Institut Curie can count on the support of its patrons who make these activities possible for the benefit of patients and caregivers:

• Philanthropia Foundation

• The French National Cancer Institute

• The Business Service for Occupational Health

• APICIL Foundation 

• Credit Agricole Foundation

More information:

Download the UTEP brochure