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

Background: 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.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention in an inpatient Rheumatology Rehabilitation setting.

Method: 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 6 weeks post intervention. The quantitative data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 25, whilst thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews.

Results: 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 6 weeks post intervention. The majority of participants evaluated the intervention as excellent whilst empowerment emerged as the core concept from the qualitative analysis.

Conclusion: 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.