Menu

rss
Evid Based Nurs 4:51 doi:10.1136/ebn.4.2.51
  • Treatment

A shared care system of hospital follow up reduced pain and use of healthcare resources and increased satisfaction in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

(2000) Rheumatology 39, 990. Hewlett S, Mitchell K, Haynes J. , et al.. Patient-initiated hospital follow-up for rheumatoid arthritis.. Sep;. :. –7.


 
 QUESTION: Is a patient and general practitioner initiated shared care system more effective than traditional rheumatologist initiated hospital care in patients with established rheumatoid arthritis?

Design

Randomised {allocation concealed}*, unblinded, controlled trial with 2 years of follow up.

Setting

A rheumatology outpatient department in Bristol, UK.

Patients

209 patients who had established rheumatoid arthritis (mean disease duration 11.5 y). 182 patients (87%) (mean age 58 y, 68% women) had complete follow up.

Intervention

105 patients were allocated to a shared care system of no routine hospital follow up but with rapid access to multidisciplinary team review on request by patients or general practitioners (GPs) (shared care group). The patients or GPs requested review by any team member through a telephone helpline staffed by a nurse who also gave general advice or assistance. The maximum wait for review was 10 working days. …

[Full text of this article]
No Related Web Pages

This Article

  1. Extract
  2. Full text
  3. PDF

Responses

  1. Submit a response
  2. No responses published

Social bookmarking

EBN Twitter Journal Club

The club runs like other journal discussion groups, except that the article and questions are posted on this blog and the discussion about the article happens on Twitter.

How to participate >>

Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.