Background

Self-management programs aim to improve patients’ abilities to cope with their chronic disease. However, validated and established programs for patients with fibrotic interstitial lung disease (fILD) are missing.

Goal

We aim to develop a modern blended patient education and self-management program for patients with fILD and assess its feasibility in patients undergoing inpatient or outpatient rehabilitative care.

Methods

The full research project consists of three sub-projects. The first sub-project consists of patient and expert interviews and a Delphi study to define the educational content of the program ensuring a patient-centered co-creation approach. The second sub-project consists of the development of the e-learning modules and the digital platform using the design model ‘ADDIE’ (‘Analysis’, ‘Design, ‘Development’, ‘Implementation’ and ‘Evaluation’) with patient-centered testing and feedback loops. Third, the intervention will be evaluated with a feasibility study, testing for intervention related outcomes (patient satisfaction, usefulness, acceptability, compliance) and study related outcomes (recruitment success, retention, etc.).