The Rheumatologist—January 19, 2017
The Rheumatologist reports on gout treatments and how they are effective if patients are able to keep up with therapies. Specifically, writer Karen Appold looks at the gout education program at HSS.
"Treatments are excellent, yet are dramatically under-utilized," said Theodore R. Fields, MD, rheumatologist at HSS. "This is because some gout patients feel better between attacks and stop taking their medication, or they ignore or never fully assimilate the need for lifelong therapy."
The reporter writes that because successful gout management requires a complex regimen of medications and self-management involving medication adherence and dietary guidelines, it is essential that patients have a good understanding of how and why medications are used, and how diet affects attacks.
HSS recently held a multi-disciplinary gout symposium to address educational needs, which was planned with the input of rheumatologists, nurses, a nutritionist and a social worker.
"We developed a 26-item needs assessment to ascertain patient self-efficacy around essential gout-related knowledge and patient-identified needs to enhance self-management," said Adena Batterman, MSW, LCSW, senior manager of Inflammatory Arthritis Support and Education Programs at HSS.
During the symposium, Dr. Fields presented on disease background, etiology, diagnosis and treatment. He also emphasized the importance of developing a patient/provider partnership to work together to reduce flares.
Read the full article at The-Rheumatologist.org.
Following the interview for this article, the study has been published and a new abstract was presented at ACR 2016 on needs assessment of patients with gout.
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