Effectiveness of health education by telephone follow-up on self-efficacy among discharged patients with rheumatoid arthritis: A randomised control trial

Abstract

Aims and objectives: To explore the effectiveness of a health education programme by telephone follow-up on the self-efficacy of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Background: Self-efficacy is increasingly perceived to be a cornerstone in improving the capacity of self-management. However, a paucity of research has demonstrated the effectiveness of health education by the use of a telephone follow-up for RA patients in China.

Design: This study was a randomised control trial.

Methods: Recruited patients were randomly divided into control and intervention groups. The intervention group accepted health education by telephone follow-up four times after the patients were discharged. The patients in the control group only accepted telephone follow-up once after they were discharged. Self-efficacy was measured by the use of the Rheumatoid Arthritis Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (RASE), and data were collected at the day before the discharge, the 12th week and the 24th week after patients were discharged. The CONSORT checklist was used to check the procedure.

Results: A total of 92 discharged patients with rheumatoid arthritis were enrolled. The sociodemographic indexes of the control and intervention groups had no significant differences at baseline (p > .05). The RASE score of the intervention group was higher than that of the control group (p < .05) at the 12th week and the 24th week.

Conclusion: The HET improved the self-efficacy of the discharged patients with RA in the 12th week and the 24th week after discharge. This study demonstrated that our HET can improve the short-term and long-term effects of self-efficacy, which implies that the clinical nursing staff should increase the frequency of HET to improve the patients' knowledge and abilities of self-management.

Relevance to clinical practice: Patients with RA will benefit from a health education programme by telephone follow-up; thus, it is necessary for nursing managers to implement this programme.

Keywords: health education; rheumatoid arthritis; self-efficacy; telephone follow-up.