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Modern education, modern media: patient empowerment in today's medicine.

Patient empowerment, in other words letting patients take charge of managing their own illnesses, is fortunately being taken ever more seriously. This is not just reflected in increased patient autonomy and individual maturity; it also improves treatment outcomes in a major way. The efficacy of patient education has already been demonstrated for a variety of indications, including asthma (1), diabetes (2), and other chronic diseases. The merit of the trial by Stefan Viktor Vormfelde and coauthors that appears in this issue of Deutsches Arzteblatt International is to have extended our knowledge that patient education does, in fact, work to the area of therapeutic anticoagulation with phenprocoumon—and to have done so with an innovative, interactive study design that was directly implemented in general practitioners‘ practices (3). Many patients are still being treated with phenprocoumon, and, in view of the current debate about the safety of the newer anticoagulant drugs (4), permanent anticoagulation with phenprocoumon will likely continue to play an important role in patient care (5). Thus, the method of patient education used in this trial will continue to be important.