Abstract
The hospital setting provides many opportunities for health promotion. There are many health professionals including physicians, nurses, medical technicians who have close contact with patients and their family. Health professionals are very influential to arouse the awareness about health and illness, and to motivate to change lifestyle among patients. Thus health professionals are most effective and important human resources for health education for patients to improve recovery rates and to promote health. In spite of the importance of health professionals' role in health promotion, the Korean government has provided little support for their health education for patients. Most of the health professionals have not learned about health education theories and skills, and have little attention to educate patients to change their lifestyle. Also the health professionals themselves have relatively poor lifestyle compared with advanced western countries. To improve health education for patients and their family, following strategies and policies should be considered: reinforcing curriculum for health education in college and training course, providing practical incentives for patient education, capacity building for health education and developing guideline for patient education, training health educators, networking and collaborating between community health center and hospitals, promoting the importance of health education among patients, researching and developing health education theory and practice including cost-benefit of health education.
