An overview of education for patients with rheumatic diseases.

Patient education is central to enabling patients with rheumatic diseases to manage their lives and live as fully and independently as possible. This education can be provided in a range of formats including individual or group sessions, through an arthritis self-management programme and opportunity education, which is informally taught by health professionals. The format selected should be suitable to the individual patient at the particular time it is delivered, and the education should include both topics that health professionals know are relevant and those that patients have cited as being important to them.