The patient should be the primary manager of chronic disease, guided and coached by a doctor or other practitioner to devise the best therapeutic regimen.1 The practitioner and patient should work as partners,2 developing strategies that give the patient the best chance to control his or her own disease and reduce the physical, psychological, social, and economic consequences of chronic illness.

In this article we consider the quality of education for patients and practitioners who are trying to manage chronic disease. We argue that neither patients nor practitioners are taught the skills that will most enable each to carry out his or her role and responsibility for disease management. We use asthma, a chronic lung disease, to show how patients and practitioners are being taught the wrong things.