Development and Examination of the Online and Offline Educational Programs for Ankylosing Spondylitis Patients

강직성 척추염 환자의 오프라인 교육과 온라인 교육 프로그램 개발 및 효과 검증

Ankylosing spondylitis(AS) is one of the most common forms of chronic arthritis causing pain and progressive disability. The purposes of this study were 1) to develop an offline educational program and online educational program for the patients with ankylosing spondylitis; and 2) to test the effectiveness of each program in terms of changes in ankylosing spondylitis self-efficacy, exercise continuity disease activity, physical functioning, and depression. The convenient samples for three groups were selected acceding to the inclusion criteria. Online education group consists of 7 patients, and 14 patients were included for the offline group, while 12 patients were assigned to the control group. Outcomes variables included self efficacy, exercise continuity, disease activity, physical function, and depression and the reliability of each measure was ranged from .88 to .95 in the present study. The offline educational program demonstrated positive effects on self-efficacy, exercise continuity, disease activity, and depression, whereas the online educational program on exercise continuity, disease activity, and depression. The self-efficacy was showed positive effect only in the offline educational program, whereas physical functioning did not improve in both intervention groups. These partial improvements may be due to the small sample size and the methods of online education program. In conclusion, the effectiveness of the offline and online educational programs was partially supported in the present study. For the improvement of these programs, the further study would be necessary to apply this kind of intervention program with larger sample and to test the psychometric of the newly development tools.