Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Adequate hormone replacement therapy in adrenal insufficiency (AI) is essential. Patients should have basic knowledge about their condition and how to minimise the change on an adrenal crisis. Education on how and when hydrocortisone replacement therapy should be adjusted together with instruction and practice an emergency injection are considered important measures to prevent a crisis. A nurse-led group-based education programme (GEP) was developed, and given from September 2018 until March 2020. In an aim to provide patients with education during COVID-19 pandemic, a video was developed based on the GEP. Both ways of education are evaluated.

Methods: Patients who followed the GEP (n=67) or watched the video (n=139) were recruited to fill in a questionnaire in retrospect. The questionnaire assessed experiences on content, contact with clinical nurse specialist and applicability in daily life. Furthermore, it contained self-reported marks before and after education, multiple choice and open questions. Also, electronic medical records for demographic data were studied.

Results: The composition of both groups seems similar when looking at gender and age. In the GEP-group 48,8% was men versus 54,7% in the video-group. The average age of the GEP-participants was 57.6 years compared with 58.0 years in the video- group. Remarkable is a doubling of the percentage participants with AI as a result of immunotherapy in the video-group. The self-reported marks were significantly improved after the GEP (P0.003). In the video-group, first analysis also showed an increase in the mean of self-reported marks from 4.81 (SD 2.6) to 7.3 (SD 1.4). In both groups the desire for repetition was regularly mentioned. Especially the video-group participants indicated they would like to receive the education sooner after diagnosis and guided practising the emergency injection was missed.

Conclusion: Overall, repeated education was explicitly indicated by a large proportion of participants in both groups. Further analysis in the video-group is being conducted.