The efficacy of a flipping education program on improving self-management in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Purpose: Self-management is widely used among patients with a chronic disease to control their condition. However, the self-management programs are less distinctive for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than those with other chronic diseases. This study examines the efficacy of a flipping education program on improving self-management in patients with COPD.

Patients and methods: A single-blinded, randomized controlled trial was conducted at a medical center in northern Taiwan from January 2015 to May 2016. Sixty participants were randomized to an experimental group and a control group. The self-management program with flipped teaching, customized action plans, and scheduled telephone interviews was implemented in the experimental group for three months. Conventional patient education was implemented in the control group. Disease knowledge, self-efficacy, the patient’s activation level, and the impact of COPD were assessed at baseline, 1 month, and 3 months after the intervention. SPSS 22.0 was used for data analysis.

Results: The results showed that the patients who received the flipping education program of self-management had statistically significant improvements in their disease knowledge (p<0.05), self-efficacy (p<0.01), and activation levels (p<0.01) from baseline to the 1 month and 3 months follow-up compared to the control group.

Conclusion: The findings supported that flipped teaching could be applied to patient education in adults and that a nurse case manager can feasibly use this flipping education program of self-management to motivate and support patients with COPD to acquire self-management skills, carry out their action plans, and help them achieve beneficial behaviors in their daily lives.

Keywords:

• patient education
• COPD
• disease knowledge
• self-efficacy
• nurse case manager

Acknowledgments

All authors express special thanks to all participants who shared their valuable experiences to this study. This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology Department (101-2314-B-002-050-MY3, 2012-2016) in Taiwan. This paper/The abstract of this paper was presented at the Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences 2017 as a poster presentation with interim findings. The poster’s abstract was not published.

Data sharing statement

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request for 10 years since this study conduct date. Any other study-related documents will be provided upon request as well.

Author contributions

The conception and design of this study came from Yi-Ya Chang. In addition, Yi-Ya Chang performed data analysis and wrote the draft of the manuscript. Yu-Tzu Dai contributed to data analysis as well as the drafting of the manuscript. Both the authors have approved the final manuscript and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.