Using Behaviour Change Techniques to characterize patient educational interventions in tertiary individual prevention of work-related skin diseases

Abstract

Tertiary Individual Prevention is an interprofessional inpatient rehabilitation programme offered to workers affected by work-related skin diseases. Health educational interventions aiming at changing skin protection behaviour are a pivotal component of the programme. This paper aims at characterizing the content of the educational interventions of the interprofessional inpatient rehabilitation programme and at reporting the mechanisms and functions for behaviour change. We retrospectively analysed existing health educational interventions with document analyses and field observations. The intervention was described using the Template of Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR). For the intervention content, the Behaviour Change Technique (BCT) Taxonomy (v1) was applied. To characterize the intervention in detail, the BCTs were then mapped to the intervention functions, the COM-B model (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation) and the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) from the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW). The health educational interventions consist of seven components. Five are delivered in a group and two as tailored face-to-face counselling. We identified 23 BCTs in 10 groups. The most common used BCTs are "instruction on how to perform skin protection behaviour," "salience of consequences," "information about skin health," and "demonstration of skin protection behaviour." To initiate the process of behaviour change in skin protection behaviour by the individuals, changes are required in all three behavioural sources (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation) and primarily in the theoretical constructs "behavioural regulation," "skills," and "beliefs about consequences." For this purpose, the five intervention functions "enablement," "training," "education," "modelling," and "persuasion" are used. Health educational interventions to change skin protection behaviour consists of different BCTs, mechanisms of change and intervention functions. This work helps to better understand the mechanisms and means of behaviour change and enables replication in other settings. In the future, the intervention programme should be extended to include BCTs addressing domains for behaviour changes which have not yet been included to maintain the new behaviour in the long-term. Finally, we recommend to report more elements of the rehabilitation programme (e.g. psychological interventions) in a standardized manner by frameworks used in this paper.

Keywords: TIDieR; behaviour change techniques; complex intervention; contact dermatitis; patient education; skin protection behaviour.