Protocol for a randomised controlled trial to estimate the effects and costs of a patient centred educational intervention in glaucoma management

Cate, Heidi, Bhattacharya, Debi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3024-7453, Clark, Allan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2965-8941, Fordham, Richard ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5520-6255, Notley, Caitlin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0876-3304 and Broadway, David C. (2012) Protocol for a randomised controlled trial to estimate the effects and costs of a patient centred educational intervention in glaucoma management. BMC Ophthalmology, 12 (1). ISSN 1471-2415

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Abstract

Background: Poor glaucoma education is thought to be a causative factor of non-adherence to glaucoma therapy. However, the multi-factorial nature of non-adherent behaviour may explain the failure of purely educational interventions to achieve significant improvement in adherence. Behaviour Change Counselling (BCC) allows both the imparting of information and assessment of patient ambivalence to medication use and may elicit behaviour change in order to achieve better adherence. The chronic and complex nature of glaucoma means that patient non-adherence to glaucoma therapy does not easily correlate with measureable objective clinical endpoints. However, electronic medication monitoring offers an objective method of measuring adherence without reliance on clinical endpoints. Methods/design: The study is a randomised controlled trial (RCT) with glaucoma (open angle) or ocular hypertension patients attending a glaucoma clinic and prescribed travoprost. The study will determine whether additional glaucoma education using BCC is beneficial and cost effective in improving adherence with glaucoma therapy. An 8-month follow-up period, using an electronic adherence monitoring device (Travalert® dosing aid, TDA), will indicate if the intervention is likely to be sustained in the longer term. Additionally, a cost-effectiveness framework will be used to estimate the cost benefit of improving adherence. The development of a novel intervention to deliver glaucoma education using BCC required practitioner training and fidelity testing. Five practitioners were successfully trained to become Glaucoma Support Assistants able to deliver the BCC intervention. The research group had prior clinical and investigative experience in this setting, and used multiple strategies to design a method to address the study objectives. Discussion: This RCT, using BCC to improve adherence to ocular hypotensive therapy, to our knowledge is the first within this disease area. Using a variety of adherence measures allows examination of the known inaccuracies of patient self-report with respect to glaucoma medication. The novel BCC component has undergone fidelity testing using BECCI and the BCC template will ensure conformity to a standardised intervention. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials: ISRCTN89683704

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © Cate et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://​creativecommons.​org/​licenses/​by/​2.​0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science
Faculty of Science > School of Pharmacy (former - to 2024)
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Patient Care
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Epidemiology and Public Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Public Health and Health Services Research (former - to 2023)
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Norwich Clinical Trials Unit
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Health Services and Primary Care
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Health Economics
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Lifespan Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Population Health
Depositing User: Rachel Smith
Date Deposited: 22 Jul 2013 16:13
Last Modified: 24 Sep 2024 08:50
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/42442
DOI: 10.1186/1471-2415-12-57

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