Authors (including presenting author) :
Cheung WT(1),Ho WH(1),Wong HL(1),Mo KC(1),Tse YK(1),Yeung CY(1),Lo TM(1),Lau FO(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Physiotherapy Department,Tai Po Hospital
Introduction :
Monitoring patient’s exercise compliance and promote their motivation to continue exercise are challenges for physiotherapists when conducting weight management interventions in psychiatric rehabilitation. The efficacy of training can further be improved if patients remain physically active after training session. Recent evidence suggested using activity tracker in weight management program can reinforce their motivation to be more physically active and continue exercise after discharge. (Cheatham et al,2018, Webb VL et al, 2017). Therefore, Tai Po hospital physiotherapy team carried out a pilot of wearing activity tracker for psychiatric inpatient weight management
Objectives :
To evaluate whether wearing activity tracker could motivate inpatient psychiatric patients to remain physically active and promote their readiness to change to continue exercising
Methodology :
Convenient sampling was adopted in the program. Activity tracker was issued to inpatient psychiatric patients who were referred for physiotherapy for weight management. Their level of physical activity was monitored by the steps counts recorded by the activity tracker daily. Mean number of step was collected weekly. For those who refused use of the activity tracker, identical weight management program was given except daily steps count could not be obtained. Patient’s motivation for change was measured by the Readiness ruler. The ruler is a self-rating scale from 0-10. “0” means not ready to change their life style with increase exercise habit and “10” means fully ready to change. Body mass index (BMI) was measured to reflect patients’ body weight. This measurement was performed on initial assessment and before discharge.
Result & Outcome :
From January to September 2018, 52 psychiatric patients were recruited into the weight management program with mean age of 38.33 ± 11.89. In average they received 19.52 ± 12.57 physiotherapy sessions. 32 of them wore activity tracker (intervention group) and 20 not wearing (control group). Mean step counts for the activity tracker group has increased from 3879.3 ± 3133.8 to 6127.9 ± 5404.5 (p=0.005). This is statistically significant by the paired T-test Readiness for change as measured by the readiness ruler self-rating scale showed a statistically significant increased from 5.77 ± 1.79 to 6.87 ± 1.61 (p=0.001) in the activity tracker group. For the control group, the rating changed from 5.18±2.90 to 5.29±2.02 which is not statistically significant (p=0.893). Independent T-test was calculated for the between group difference of the “readiness to change” which has demonstrated to be significant with p=0.049. For BMI, the mean value of activity tracker group changed from 28.83 to 28.98 and that of control group was from 27.93 to 28.04. The Within group and between group difference of the BMI in both groups were statistically non-significant with p=0.185, p=0.635 and 0.079 respectively.
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