Phone support boost to COPD patients (IAustralia)

Researchers from Australia have found that even brief phone contact from medical professionals can provide benefits to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). But a structured telephone-delivered mentoring program over 12 months provided additional advantages with regard to self-management capacity and disease knowledge. The team randomly assigned 31 general practices in Tasmania to intervention or control, with 74 and 80 COPD patients subsequently assigned to the respective groups completing the study. Patients in the intervention group received a median of 9.5 30-minute telephone calls from community nurses trained as health mentors. They provided cognitive behavioral-based support, including psychoeducation, self-management skills, cognitive coping skills training, communication skills, and self-efficacy promotion. Meanwhile patients in the control group received usual care as well as a median of nine phone calls, lasting on average 1 minute, from a research nurse. Reporting in BMJ Open, the team found that patients in the mentored group experienced significantly greater improvements in chronic disease self-management scores, according to the Partners in Health scale