Abstract

Background: Patient education is an important part of the management of rheumatic and other diseases. Since patients do not have the same needs, it is crucial to assess needs of a targeted group to be able to tailor educational interventions. Objectives: To assess educational needs of a large cohort of patients with different rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases attending a health facility in Austria. Methods: We conducted an online survey with patients attending the Gastein Healing Galleries in Bad Gastein, Austria. Approximately 12,000 patients with a variety of diseases are treated in the centre every year. Of those, 6,465 patients were invited by email to fill out an anonymous online survey. Socio-demographics and health outcomes were collected from all respondents. In addition, the Educational Needs Assessment Tool (Austrian version - OENAT) was administered to a subset of respondents. The OENAT (39 items) assesses 7 domains of educational needs: Managing Pain, Movement, Managing Feelings, Arthritis/Disease process, Treatments, Self Help Measures, Support Systems. Results: In total 2017 (31%) patients responded of which 516 had data on educational needs: AS (63%), RA (14%), and FM (24%). Their mean (SD) age was 56 (11), and 54% were male. Level of education was: Elementary School (32%), Junior High School (22%), High School (21%), College (12%), and University (14%). Table 1 presents differences in educational needs across disease groups. Across the groups, there were significant differences in following OENAT domains: Managing Pain, Feelings, Treatments, and Support Systems. There were no differences in the level of educational needs in Movements, Disease Process, and Self-Help Measures. Patients with FM had significantly lower needs for managing and higher needs for feeling education, compared to those with AS and RA (p Conclusion: Educational needs vary by disease groups and depend on the domain under consideration. Disclosure of Interests: None declared

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