A longitudinal study of educational needs among patients with inflammatory arthritis

Abstract

Introduction: Patient education is important in the follow-up and disease management for patients with chronic inflammatory arthritis. Patients' needs for education and information varies, and it is important that the education is tailored to the individual patient. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate whether patients' educational needs change over time, and which demographic, disease-related or self-management characteristics that are associated with patients' educational needs. Methods:The Mann-Whitney U-test was used to study patients' longitudinal educational needs and whether their needs change over time, while multivariable linear regression analyses were used to investigate associations between patients' educational needs and demographic variables, disease-related and self-management characteristics.Results: There were no changes in patients' educational needs in the domains of managing pain, movement, feelings, arthritis process and treatment from health professionals during the study period of seven years. A small decrease in educational needs in the domains self-help measures (p-value 0.047) and support from others (p-value 0.010) was detected. The regression analyses showed that higher educational needs were associated with being female, lower educational level, shorter disease duration, and a lower level of patient activation. Conclusions: Patients with chronic inflammatory arthritis have continual needs for patient education throughout their disease trajectory. Nurses and health care professionals must therefore ask their patients what kind of education they need at every follow-up throughout the disease course.

Predictors of psychological resilience trajectories in patients with knee arthroplasty: A longitudinal study

“…As hope is a multidimensional and dynamic life force, it may facilitate an individual's psychological adjustment by influencing appraisal and coping strategies (Wu et al, 2021). This result is supported by some recent trajectory analyses in orthopaedic or surgical populations that showed that the level of hope significantly predicted fatigue symptoms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (Xu et al, 2017) and psychological resilience in patients with orthognathic surgery (Grønning et al, 2021). However, an unrealistic expectation of surgical recovery is a common phenomenon in orthopaedic surgery, even though evidence-based practice guidelines have clearly pointed out that some factors may influence an individual's recovery from surgery (van Doormaal et al, 2020).…”

“…Therefore, this difference between the above variables might be masked by other predictors. For example, in a previous study, social support and positive psychological resources in patients with arthritis were predictors of psychological resilience (Smith & Zautra, 2008), while considering the characteristics of chronic degenerative knee disease and rehabilitation after surgery, patients need more self‐management education and accessibility to local health resources (Grønning et al, 2021). Therefore, education level and the distribution and accessibility of medical resources are the key components of self‐management and social support and seem to be more significant to psychological resilience.…”

“…With respect to the statistical methodology, most of the previous longitudinal studies have been conducted based on a variable‐centred analytical approach (Grønning et al, 2021); however, identifying classes or subgroups sharing similar longitudinal patterns on a certain dependent variable could provide a novel breakthrough for targeted intervention. The trajectory analysis approach allows a more nuanced perspective on the way resilience changes over time by modelling the pattern of an individual's resilience, thus providing the opportunity to explore the associations with resilience at any investigation point within trajectory groups (Galatzer‐Levy & Bonanno, 2012).…”