PROMs: a novel approach to arthritis self-management

Abstract

Despite our knowledge of many effective education techniques, there is little evidence that clinicians have incorporated them into their daily practices. One of the reasons for the underutilization of patient education may be that physicians are expecting the specialist nurses to provide this service, whereas the nurses lack any formal protocol for patient education in standard clinical practice. Self-management programmes are now acknowledged as a key element of quality care. A high priority for research is the development and diffusion of patient education strategies that are tailored to address patient needs and applicable for the standard day to day practice. This paper describes the rationale and design of the 'Joint Fitness Program' which is a new patient-based educational programme integrating patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and self-management for people with inflammatory arthritis. This education programme, which illustrates how theory can explicitly be translated into practice, addresses PROMs as an objective tool to assess the educational needs of patients with arthritis and uses the PROMs to design an education programme and not just evaluate the disease activity.