Yes / The increasing prevalence and associated cost of treating Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
(COPD) is unsustainable, and focus is needed on self-management and prevention of hospital admissions.
Telehealth monitoring of patients’ vital signs allows clinicians to prioritise their workload and enables patients to
take more responsibility for their health. This paper reports the results of a qualitative study embedded within a
feasibility and pilot Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) of Telehealth-supported care within a community-based
COPD supported-discharge service. The aim of the study was to qualitatively explore the experiences of patients
with COPD who had received either a Telehealth-supported or a specialist nursing intervention following their
discharge from hospital after an admission for a COPD exacerbation.
Methods: Patients were invited to either participate in semi-structured interviews or to complete a semi-structured
self-administered questionnaire on completion of the intervention. Nine patients were interviewed (67 % female)
and seventeen patients completed the questionnaires. In addition, three clinicians responsible for the delivery of
both interventions were interviewed to obtain their perspectives on the new services.
Results: Seven underlying themes emerged from the patient interviews and were further explored in the
questionnaires: (1) patient demographics; (2) information received by the participants; (3) installation of the
Telehealth technology; (4) Telehealth service functionality; (5) visits; (6) service withdrawal; and (7) service
perceptions. Recipients of both services reported feelings of safety derived from the delivery of an integrated,
community-based service.
Conclusions: Although recipients of the Telehealth service received 50 % fewer home visits from the
clinicians than recipients of a more traditional community-based nursing intervention, the patients were
enthusiastic about the service, with some describing it as the best service they had ever received. This
suggests that a Telehealth intervention is an acceptable alternative to a more traditional home nursing visit
model for monitoring community-based patients with COPD following their discharge from hospital.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/11039 |
| Date | 03 August 2016 |
| Creators | Fitzsimmons, D.A., Thompson, J., Bentley, C.L., Mountain, Gail |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2016 The Authors. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), CC-BY |
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