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 UK with direct NHS 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 due to start PR will either be allocated to an experimental condition to receive a series of 10 digital films alongside their standard 7-week PR 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 the PRP. 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 and the role this may play is encouraging PR attendance.