Authors (including presenting author) :
Cheung YM(2), LI KK(1), Mak HKC(3), Lau CKA(3), Kwong WHS(2), Leung AL(2), Cheng WW(3)
Affiliation :
(1)Department of Orthopaedics & Traumatology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital (2)Ambulatory Care Clinic, Queen Elizabeth Hospital (3)Department of Information Technology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Introduction :
With the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, many patients are stuck at home and cannot attend the follow-up in person due to infected by COVID or afraid to go in the city. Therefore a digital platform was introduced as a new care model to maintain the provision of TeleHealth education remotely to our patients, it keeps to monitor patient’s progress and continues to maintain to empower patient in anywhere. Back pain is a common problem overloading the specialist clinic services. Tele mode of Integrated Spinal Clinic (ISC) was established in 2019 to help appropriate utilization of clinic resources.
Objectives :
To compare the efficacy and patient’s satisfaction of class-based training with webinar-based training in patients with back pain in a single-center.
Methodology :
A total of 216 patients were included in the study. Patients were assessed with a questionnaire, physical examination and investigations to rule out spinal pathology and subsequently referred to an education programme. The groups were formed sequentially, such that the first 125 patients were the control group (managed with class-based training and written-survey) and the next 91 patients formed the intervention group (managed with webinar training and electronic-survey). The education included pain control strategies, exercises and life modification. In the intervention group, patients could attend webinar training at home or in the office. A real-time question and answer session with nurses and physiotherapists was carried out after the session. Patients were then guided to fill in an electronic questionnaire at the end. We compared these approaches in terms of (1)Numeric Pain Rating Scale(NPRS), (2)Numeric Global Rating of Change Scale(NGRCS), (3) Hong Kong Short Form Healthy Survey (SF-12v2), and (4) Discharge status.
Result & Outcome :
It was found that there was a statistically significant decrease in NPRS, increase in NGRCS and increase in SF-12v2 physical and mental component summary scores upon completion of the programme for both the control and study groups. In addition, there was no significant difference in NPRS, NGRCS and SF-12v2 scores between the two groups. Both groups of patients were successfully discharged from the programme within 6 months. (84.1% vs 89.7%). Patients with spinal pathology were referred to spinal clinic for further management (16.0% vs 10.3%). The majority of patients adjusted well to the disease and no patients were referred to any clinics for similar issues after discharge. The high prevalence of back pain in our population requires special attention despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The Integrated Spinal Clinic has proven to be a success in addressing this significant issue and webinar is found to be effective in the education of patients in the era of social distancing. We believe that the integration of digital platform in health care services will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of patient management programme.
