ESCAPE-pain Programme in Malaysia

In Malaysia, functional limitations and impaired daily living activities affect patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) in such a way that they tend to refrain from hospital visits. This may may lead to depression and reduced quality of life, which may then impact on increases in health care costs. The service provided by hospitals to these patients, is under-utilised by the multi-ethnic people that make up the population. Through the researcher's previous clinical experience, it was observed that patients were complaining of difficulty in getting to the hospital, long waiting times, and also increasing transport costs. Thus, adoption of self-care and early prevention has been suggested as a solution for the OA affected Malaysian community. In addition, there is no home based exercise programme for patients with knee OA in current health practice in Malaysia. Although some of these patients in Malaysia are prescribed with home-based exercises, a fully comprehensive self-management programme is lacking for patients generally. Therefore, there is a need for a home based self-management exercise programme for people with knee OA which can be implemented in community setting without frequent involvement of the hospitals. The UK Medical Research Council Guidance and Framework on developing and evaluating complex interventions will be used to facilitate the process of developing a complex intervention. A systematic review of the literature identified an exercise programme called ESCAPE-Pain as the programme with the best evidence for adaptation as a self-management programme to implement in Malaysia.

In phase 1, (already conducted), the investigators have undertaken interviews with patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) in Malaysia to identify their beliefs and attitudes towards the ESCAPE-pain programme. Preliminary analysis reveals that patients with knee OA and HCPs have positive views towards the implementation of the programme with integration of a few new components.

In this phase, the investigators propose to undertake a feasibility randomised controlled trial in which the investigators compare the modified ESCAPE-pain programme for the Malaysian context, versus usual care in Malaysian OA patients. ESCAPE-pain is a rehabilitation programme that helps people with osteoarthritis (OA) and/or chronic joint pain to self -manage their condition. The programme aims to increase physical function and improve quality of life. The ESCAPE-pain programme, will be run over six weeks, with participants attending for one hour session, twice a week. Each session contains around a 20 minutes themed discussion focused on helping to support self-management and followed by about 45 minutes of exercise. The sessions will be led by the researcher who trained in how to deliver the ESCAPE-pain programme.

This feasibility study is required to identify the best methods for a definitive trial in the future, to test recruitment and other trial procedures, the acceptability of the intervention and the way it is implemented and to provide insight into appropriateness of our outcome measures, including providing data to permit estimation of effect size to be used in sample size calculations for a definitive trial.