Abstract
The educational needs assessment tool (ENAT) is a seven-domain questionnaire assessing the educational needs (EN) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of this study was to validate the Italian version of the ENAT and to identify factors associated with EN in people with RA. The original English ENAT version was translated into Italian according to Beaton’s method and subjected to Rasch analysis for validity testing. Socio-demographic and clinical variables were tested for associations with the ENAT domain scores using a multivariable linear regression model. The ENAT translated well into Italian and retained its construct validity. Some adjustments were needed when pooling the Italian and English datasets. The overall score of the ENAT had a high median: 82.8 (interquartile range (IQR): 57.5 to 100) i.e., 72.4% of the maximum score. The highest score was observed in the domain “Arthritis process” and the lowest was in “Support systems”. Only gender was independently associated with EN (females having higher EN than males). The Italian ENAT is feasible for the use in the clinical setting and may help the health care practitioners to tailor educational interventions for RA patients. The characteristics of the patients, particularly female gender, may be associated with higher EN.
Highlights
Patient education is an important part of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) management and should complement clinical care
Most national and international guidelines recommend that patient education is adequately addressed by health care practitioners, [5,6,7,8] only a few studies have been carried out to deepen the knowledge on what the educational needs are, as perceived by RA patients
We found that educational needs of patients with RA vary because of subjective and clinical characteristics
Summary
Patient education is an important part of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) management and should complement clinical care. The Educational Needs Assessment Tool (ENAT) is the only questionnaire to assess the educational needs of RA patients. It was developed by patients and practitioners in the United Kingdom (UK) [9]. The sum of the score of each item gives the total score, ranging from zero to 156. It showed a good fit to the Rasch model which confirms a good construct validity, unidimensionality of the scale and invariance to gender, age, educational background and disease duration [10]. Percentage scores of the total score and of the score of each domain have been used to compare the results of each domain [14]
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