ABSTRACT Objective Many people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have chronic pain and flares of arthritis. The National RA Society has co‐produced a freely available online learning module with an NHS multidisciplinary rheumatology team to support people with self‐managing these RA impacts. This service evaluation assessed peoples' self‐reported knowledge and confidence in self‐managing pain/flares before and after accessing the module, the extent to which they used the module suggestions, and how they felt the module could be improved. Methods A survey was sent via email in March 2024 to the 500 people completing the module who consented to contact for feedback. Survey questions covered: pain experience/management; knowledge/confidence on managing pain/flares; likelihood of trying module suggestions; and free‐text feedback. Descriptive statistics summarised responses. Fisher's exact tests compared Likert‐type responses for knowledge/confidence pre‐/post‐module. Results One hundred and thirty four people completed the survey (27% response rate), of whom 98% experienced pain in the past 3 months and 36% reported ‘high impact’ chronic pain. More (95%) reported being ‘very/fairly/somewhat’ knowledgeable at managing pain after completing the module compared to before completing the module (62%; p < 0.01). For managing flares, these levels were 93% post‐module versus 52% pre‐module ( p < 0.01). Similar findings were seen for confidence. 90% reported themselves as ‘very/fairly/somewhat’ confident at managing pain post‐module versus 50% pre‐module ( p < 0.01). For managing flares, these levels were 90% post‐module versus 44% pre‐module ( p < 0.01). Most reported they were likely to try module suggestions. Conclusions This freely available online digital information about pain/flares was appreciated by people with RA and helped them deal with these common condition aspects.
Scott et al. (Sun,) studied this question.