Aims and Scope

Health Care Education in Practice is an Italian academic journal published two times a year (May and November) with the aim of expanding and disseminating an educational culture in the health care settings.

As is widely known, in the last half century several social, economic and cultural changes coupled with scientific discoveries profoundly modified the nature of diseases: first, overcoming viral and bacteriological infections and increasing life expectation (with the consequential increase of the number of patients afflicted by a chronic-degenerative condition); second, allowing various psychological, psychiatric and social suffering to be recognized and integrated by health care and social systems. In these past fifty years, even the nature of relationship both between people and their health and between patients and their physicians changed: more and more chronical-ill patients, being aware and informed about their conditions and their chances, demand to be treated as people before as instances of diseases or disorders. Therefore, it should be necessary to rethink the way we have cared for patients until now, introducing a new perspective, better oriented towards understanding and caring for patients’ illness and discomfort: in the future, it should be possible to care for a patient not only making a diagnosis and deciding on a therapy (pharmaceutical, clinical or surgical) but also rehabilitating and educating the ill persons, thus allowing them to attain a good quality of life, understood as physical wellness, identity reconstruction and community participation.

This Journal emerges from this cultural, social and scientific background: its first objective is therefore to collect different educational experiences, in practice and research, from all those professionals who in their work interact daily with people suffering from a health problem (diseases non-communicable, psychiatric disorder, disability, neuropsychiatric disorder, neurodegenerative deficit, addiction, eating disorder, and so on ...). Professionals who have well understood the essential role of education in taking care for a suffering person; articles or experiences from professional educators (both health and social), pedagogists, doctors, nurses or other types of social workers are therefore welcome.

The final purpose of JHCEP is to create a new possible confrontation between the pedagogical perspective and the health practices in the care of chronic diseases and disorders: educational practices and competences should become a topic of discussion in academia and in the social or health communities’ services and our Journal hopes to make a significant contribution to this goal. JHCEP wants to support the sharing and the implementation of good practices coming from numerous professionals and, in the same time, to enable Editors and professionals to work together for a gradual expansion of the theoretical knowledge of health education, therapeutic education and rehabilitation practices.

Above all, the Editors hope this journal will contribute to the diffusion of a new perspective of caring for patients as persons who need to be respect and empowered as human being, as Don Milani and Paulo Freire taught.  

Topics of interest

The main topic of JHCEP is pedagogical perspective and educational good practices and researches in the contest of illness, disability or mental health. More specifically:

• mental health (depression, psychosis and schizophrenia, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, etc);
• addiction (drug addiction, gambling addiction, smoke and alcohol addiction);
• chronic disease and illness (diabetes, heart disease, chronic renal failure, liver failure and cirrhosis, organ transplantation, cancer, etc.);
• neurodegenerative disorders (Parkinson, Alzheimer, SLA, etc.);
• neuropsychiatry (autism and developmental psychosis, disorders of psychological development, learning and speech disorders, child depression, mental health, behavioural, emotional and social functioning disorders, attention deficit /hyperactivity disorder, etc);
• physical, cognitive and sensitive disability (mental delay, deafness, blindness, silence, motor deficit, etc.).

Other topics are life-long learning and training in the health professional degree courses or ECM; last, problems and obstacles interposing to the educational practices.

Open access policy

The Journal provides immediate open access to its contents on the principle, shared by the University of Padua, that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Publication charges

There is no submission or publication fee.

Article types

HCEP accepts manuscripts/proposals for the following categories:

1. Scientific Articles
2. Practical experiences and educational projects
3. Synopses of degree course theses
4. Book recensions

Language

The Journal is open to contributions coming from Italian and foreign academic or both experts and professionals working in the health care services.  JHCEP accepts contributions both in the Italian and English language, with the request of a bilingual abstract.