Verpleegkundige zorg voor patiënten met COPD in de eerste lijn: een biopsychosociaal perspectief

Summary

Primary care nursing for patients with COPD, a biopsychosocial perspective
Saskia Weldam

AIM: The aim of this thesis was to develop and evaluate a nursing intervention to guide patients with COPD in primary care in order to improve health-related quality of life.
METHOD: Points of action that can guide a new nursing intervention were investigated in several studies. Based on these insights, a comprehensive nursing intervention was developed and evaluated with patients and professionals.
FINDINGS: Psychological aspects, especially illness perceptions, contribute to individual differences in health-related quality of life in patients with COPD. The developed COPD-GRIP intervention takes illness perceptions into account and provides nurses with a structured tool to address illness perceptions in daily clinical care. Health behaviour was improved during six weeks and patients felt ‘listened to’ and acknowledged. However, the intervention did not significantly improve healthrelated quality of life.
CONCLUSION: A vital aspect of COPD care is to understand how patients perceive their illness and acknowledge individual differences in COPD patients. To address these issues, nurses can use COPD-GRIP, a comprehensive nursing intervention focusing on illness perceptions. The intervention duration should be extended by some ongoing support. There is an urgent need for reconsideration of nursing and patient outcome measures to capture individual experiences and differences.

Keywords: COPD, quality of life, clinical nursing research, primary care nursing, patient perception