Patient Education and Transitions of Care After Venous Thromboembolism

Effective patient education employs an integrated, patient-centered, and multidisciplinary approach to ensure patients have accurate and actionable knowledge needed to successfully manage their disease and its treatment during the transition from the hospital to home, following a new diagnosis of venous thromboembolism (VTE). Through patient education, patients become more familiar with their VTE diagnosis and its treatment, including basics of the treatment mechanism, dosing schedules, medication interactions, and potential side effects. When implemented effectively, this has the potential to increase patient engagement and adherence to the treatment plan and reduce future adverse clinical events, including the risk of bleeding, recurrence, or unnecessary visits to the healthcare system. Patient education should be an ongoing process, occurring at various stages throughout the patient’s hospital stay and continuing in the outpatient setting, where topics such as the need for thrombophilia or cancer screening, the importance of lifestyle modification, and the presence of persistent symptoms or late sequelae may be better addressed. Despite its recognized importance, many barriers to optimal patient education following VTE still remain. These commonly involve issues with communication (both provider-to-patient and provider-to-provider) but may also include financial barriers or a lack of appropriate social support. Several potential solutions and communication strategies exist to aid in the effective transfer of tailored information to an individual patient, including the teach-back method where one assesses knowledge acquisition and understanding by asking the patient or caregiver to explain back the information that has been previously communicated to them.