A Lifestyle Management for Arthritis Group education intervention for people with inflammatory and degenerative arthritis: An observational study.

Abstract

Occupational therapy self-management groups aim to assist individuals to incorporate health-promoting behaviours and management strategies into their daily routines to promote wellbeing. The Lifestyle Management for Arthritis Group (LMAG) is a 2-h-long, occupational therapy educational-behavioural group intervention adapted from the evidence-based Lifestyle Management for Arthritis Programme (Hammond & Rayner,2013) and was delivered to inpatients with inflammatory and degenerative arthritis separately. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention in an inpatient Rheumatology Rehabilitation setting. This was an observational study with a pretest-posttest design using multiple methods. A knowledge of joint protection survey was gathered at three intervals. In-depth semi-structured phone interviews were undertaken 6weeks post intervention. The quantitative data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 25, whilst thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews. The results confirmed that the 36 participants who completed the study had increased joint protection knowledge immediately after LMAG and continued to retain that knowledge 6weeks post intervention. The majority of participants evaluated the intervention as excellent whilst empowerment emerged as the core concept from the qualitative analysis. These study findings suggest that the LMAG intervention can have a beneficial effect inimproving the self-management skills and confidence levels of patients with inflammatory and degenerative arthritis.