Do Educational Digital Films Enhance Patient COPD Outcomes?

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) refers to a group of lung conditions characterized by airways inflammation, small airways obstruction and progressive loss of lung function. There are 900,000 people diagnosed with COPD in England and Wales but allowing for under-diagnosis, the true prevalence could be 1.5 million. Sufferers are extensive health care users; where COPD is the second most common cause of emergency hospital admission in the United Kingdom with direct National Health Service costs over £800 million per year. Pulmonary Rehabilitation programs (PRPs) aim to provide education and support for patients whilst improving clinical outcomes, however, attendance to these programs can be low.

This study aims to trial a series of digital films aimed at educating patients about their condition from the comfort of their own home. Approximately 80 patients eligible for PR will be allocated to an experimental condition to receive a series of 10 digital films alongside their standard 7-week PR, solely to receive 10 digital films, or to a control condition in the form of standard PR (no digital films). Outcome measures such as PR attendance, hospital admissions, quality of life (QoL), disease knowledge, psychological need satisfaction and motivation will be measured pre and post. Analysis of this data between the experimental and control conditions pre-post intervention will provide useful information regarding the efficacy of digital film prescriptions as an adjunct to usual PR, or on its own, and the role this may play is encouraging PR attendance.

Inclusion criteria

• Eligible for pulmonary rehabilitation in Hywel Dda University Health Board.

Exclusion criteria

• Unwilling or unable to give informed consent
• life expectancy of less than 6 months
• unstable cardiovascular disease, dementia, cancers other than non-melanoma skins cancer
• any condition that precludes patients using laptops or mobile phones (e.g. blind, deaf)