In order to be able to manage with the stoma patients need a lot of information about biophysiological, functional, experiential, ethical, social and financial areas. Need of information is, however, very unique and varies among the patients.

In this program patient education are seen as an empowering action; empowering patients through education by using the concept map as a tool for learning. Idea of the empowering patient education is to bring out the feeling of capability in managing with their situation and the possibility to make informed decisions about their care. Concept map as a tool for education clarifies the type of information needed by the patient in different states of learning process.

The purpose of this program is to develop outpatient nursing standards of stoma patient in Turku university hospital. The ultimate goal is to systemize the stoma patients' education given by stoma nurses.

Specifically the aims were 1) to educate stoma nurses to understand empowering patient education and to use concept map as a method in their patient education practices, 2) to develop the content of empowering education, 3) to produce education material for all nurses who take care of stoma patients, 4) to test and evaluate effectiveness of the empowering education method and the use of content map.

The new modelled outpatient clinic started with new patient education practices in fall 2007. The data of patients (n=10) collected by interviewing, the nurses data (n=40) by questionnaires and the documents of patient education situation (n=36, content, timing etc) collected during fall 2007. The data will be analysed in spring 2008 and the results are ready to be reported in later spring 2008.