Effect of Patient Education in Rheumatic Diseases

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Status: Completed

Conditions: Polyarthritis

Treatments: Behavioral: Patient education with individual nurse consultations

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00623922

4.2007.2472

NSD 17975

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of patient education (PE) in patients with arthritis. PE has become a task that is dictated by law in Norway, and is increasingly used as an element in the treatment of patients with chronic complaints. Our hypothesis is that

• PE delivered as group education, followed by an individual nurse consultation increases the patients wellbeing an ability to cope with the disease.

Full description

There has been a rather long tradition of PE for patients with arthritis. A recent systematic review found that PE had small short-term effects on disability, joint counts, patient global assessment, psychological status and depression, but this effect disappeared on the latest time of follow up (3-14 months). A recent large British study also failed to show an effect on pain, physical functioning, or contact with primary care after 12 months, but found a significant effect on anxiety and improved the participants' perceived self efficacy. This indicates that the present forms of interventions fails to show a long term effect. One possible reason for the lack of long term effect might be that these interventions are given to groups only. Patients seem to prefer one-to-one interaction regarding information about the disease and its treatment together with emotional aspects, while education in groups are preferred for physical training and relational topics.

Enrollment: 141 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 80 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Polyarthritis
• 18-80 years
• native Norwegian speaking
• able to understand and participate in the PE program

Exclusion criteria

• Participated in a patient educational program the latest 12 months

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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141 participants in 2 patient groups

1

Experimental group

Description:

Patient education

Treatment:

Behavioral: Patient education with individual nurse consultations

2

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual care