Outpatients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Strongly Prefer Annual Telephone Calls From an IBD Nurse Instead of Outpatient Visits

With the increasing number of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and consequently limited available resources, the organization and quality of care that patients receive require ongoing attention. Many initiatives have been introduced, but few have begun by asking the patients about their support for planned changes to their care. The aim of this project was to investigate the willingness and concerns of outpatients with IBD to change regular outpatient visits to annual telephone calls from an IBD nurse. We also wanted to illuminate any potential barriers to introducing self-management (SM) to this population. One way to accomplish this is by introducing SM that replaces routine appointments in the outpatient clinic with annual blood sample collection, followed by a telephone call from an IBD nurse and direct acute access to the clinic, if needed. We consecutively included 150 IBD patients who attended the outpatient clinic at Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus C, Denmark. They were asked to which extent they were willing to shift to the SM approach from their current routine. The survey showed that 87% of the patients agreed to adopt the SM approach. Many patients commented that it was an excellent and timesaving idea. Those who had doubts were mainly older, retired patients. Their concerns were mainly due to hearing loss, disease activity, medical treatment monitoring, and worries about the competence of the IBD nurse.