[Comprehensibility of patient education in orthopaedic rehabilitation: a qualitative study on patients and providers]

Abstract

Study objective: An important requirement for achieving postulated goals in the context of patient education is that patient education be conducted in a way that the patients can understand it. It is the objective of this explorative study to examine how patients and providers evaluate the comprehensibility and patients' comprehension of patient education under routine conditions during orthopaedic rehabilitation. Furthermore, we aim to explore the influencing factors that patients and providers describe as conducive and counterproductive to the comprehensibility of patient education, and the ideas or desires they have as to how patient education can be made more comprehensible.

Methods: We conducted guided focus groups with 50 patients with chronic back pain or osteoarthritis aged between 22 and 71 years (M=50.4, SD=9.4) and 35 patient education providers aged between 26 and 61 years (M=44.9, SD=9.8) in a total of 9 orthopaedic rehabilitation centres. Qualitative analyses of the interview transcripts were conducted according to Mayring's content analytic approach using Atlas.ti software.

Results: Patients and providers evaluate patient education as generally comprehensible. The involvement of patients in patient education is reported by both patients and providers as the main conducive factor. Patients describe poor (e. g. superficial or contradictory) information as counterproductive regarding comprehensibility, while providers tend to mention patients' lack of motivation and of taking personal responsibility as hindering patients' comprehension. Patients' and providers' proposals and ideas can be organized in the topics patient education (e. g. stronger reference to patients' everyday life), providers (e. g. improving providers' tutoring skills), information (e. g. more information), patient involvement (e. g. stronger consideration of patients' interests), organization (e. g. smaller groups), and goal clarification (e. g. consideration of patients' expectations).

Conclusion: Our results reveal that good comprehensibility can be achieved in patient education during routine orthopaedic rehabilitation. They also show the factors that account for good comprehensibility. The counterproductive factors described by patients and providers provide evidence of the factors that may hold potential for improving patient education with regard to comprehensibility.