Case Method Education on COPD to General Practitioners

Summary

Background:

COPD is an inflammatory and chronic obstructive lung disease, mainly caused by smoking. Most patients with COPD are discovered and treated in primary health care. Co-morbidity with heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis and underweight is common. It is important to diagnose COPD at an early stage, primarily to motivate smoking cessation, which is the most important factor for decelerating the progress of COPD. In addition, medication and rehabilitation to reduce symptoms of COPD can be given. Previous studies in Sweden have shown poor quality of primary health care provided to patients with COPD.

As general practitioners often deal with multiple medical problems and patients' motivation when diagnosing and treating COPD we hypothesize that case method education (see description under "intervention") in COPD has better effect than traditional education (see description under "intervention").This study aims to examine the effect of case method education on (1) learning in COPD among general practitioners and on (2) health in their patients with COPD.

Method:

Primary health care centers (PHCC) in Stockholm will be recruited. The PHCCs will be randomized to either case method education (n=9 PHCCs) or traditional education (n=9 PHCCs) in COPD for their general practitioners. The educations will be held during two times (two hours each) within a time range of three months, covering examination and treatment of patients with COPD. At least 10.000 patients should be listed at PHCCs included. Random sampling of 45 patients with COPD at stage 2-3 will be done from each PHCC. The patients will fill in a self-assessment questionnaire including CCQ, CAT and LINQ (see outcome measures) as well as questions about medication, exacerbations and other chronic diseases. The questionnaire will be sent to the patients 1-2 months before the education and 18 months after the education. Differences in assessments in the questionnaire before and after the education will be compared between the patients listed at the PHCCs that have received case method education vs. traditional education. In addition, general practitioners (approximately, n=180) at the PHCCs will fill in a questionnaire, immediately before and 12 months after the education, covering the learning outcomes in order to study differences in learning between the two intervention groups.

Conditions

• COPD

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Case method education in COPD

In case method a rich narrative describing of a real-life situation (teaching case) is presented, in which the learning group must make a decision or solve a problem. The teaching case provide information, but neither analysis nor conclusions. The analytical work of explaining the relationships among events in the case, identifying options, evaluating choices and predicting the effects of actions is the work done by students during the discussion.

BEHAVIORAL

Traditional education in COPD

Traditional education in this study means that the teacher mainly speaks to the group. Although short cases may be used for illustration, the main focus is not that the group shall solve problems from a narrative case.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Dalarna County Council, Sweden

  collaborator OTHER

• Karolinska Institutet

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Anna Nager, PhD · Karolinska Institutet

• Hanna Sandelowsky, MD · Karolinska Institutet

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-10-16

Primary Completion

2018-12-12

Completion

2018-12-12

Countries

• Sweden

Study Locations