Therapeutic Patient Education (TPE) is of increasing importance in patients' management program by providing them, in a comprehensive manner, the knowledge relevant to their disease. PID is a particularly challenging field for TPE application. Indeed not only immunology is a discipline endowed with many levels of complexity but, in addition, PID usually manifest early in life, with several clinical faces.
The PID4KIDS program (Primary Immune Deficiencies for Kids) is a TPE program conducted by both the Immunology care unit at the Children Hospital, and the BSc students enrolled in immunology program at the University of Toulouse.
The program involves several steps. First, the immunology professor invited his students to form team-projects with the objective to assemble immunology resources dedicated to children. Second, the students proposed a project, which they developed upon validation over a 3-months period. The project development was assisted scientifically by PhD students and technically by a civic service volunteer. Third, the resources were transferred to the care unit with the aim to be proposed to patients in TPE sessions. Two videos, one book, fact sheets and 5 board games were produced by 28 students split in 9 team-projects. A dialog between the staff of the care unit, the professor and the student will be engaged to step-by step improve the content of the provided resources at the benefits of the patients.
We believe these benefits will extend in the next few years to the PID patients which could be enrolled in the coming TPE sessions.