Previously submitted to: JMIR Human Factors (no longer under consideration since Mar 26, 2022)
Date Submitted: Oct 31, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Counseling among patients with knee osteoarthritis: a qualitative study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Knee osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease that is increasing globally. Digital patient counseling is a promising but seldom researched approach to help patients get the right information at the right time for promoting a more active in their own care.
Objective:
To describe the experiences of counseling and perceptions of digital counseling among patients with knee osteoarthritis in primary health care.
Methods:
The data was collected through interviews from ten patients with knee osteoarthritis who had outpatient physical therapy in Finland during 2020–21. The data was analyzed using both inductive and deductive content analysis.
Results:
Overall, patients were highly satisfied with the counseling resources (e.g., facilities, counseling methods and materials, physiotherapists’ competence), the content of counseling (e.g., disease, treatment, and rehabilitation), and the implementation of counseling (e.g., interaction, patient-centered, goal-oriented). In addition, counseling was found to have positive benefits for the patients’ everyday life and continuity of care. However, diverse health information needs, as well as enablers and barriers in digital counseling, were identified.
Conclusions:
This study highlights the diversity of needs from different individuals and the importance of patient-centeredness and goal-oriented counseling. In addition, it demonstrated a lack of knowledge in processing and using health information.
Citation
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Copyright
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