Full Title: Nurse-delivered, home-based pragmatic rehabilitation has a short-term effect on improving fatigue in people with chronic fatigue syndrome compared with usual GP care, but effects were not sustained at 1 year
Author: Jo Armes
Publication: Evidenced-Based Nursing
Publication Date: 28th July 2010
Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery, King's College London, 57 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK; jo.armes@kcl.ac.uk
Commentary on:
Wearden AJ, Dowrick C, Chew-Graham C, et al .; Fatigue Intervention by Nurses Evaluation (FINE) trial writing group and the FINE trial group. Nurse led, home based self help treatment for patients in primary care with chronic fatigue syndrome: randomised controlled trial. BMJ 2010;340:c1777.
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a debilitating condition for which there are few proven treatments that are not delivered by specialist therapists. Wearden and colleagues tested an intervention designed to test whether non-specialists can effectively manage CFS in primary care. The nurse-delivered intervention, known as pragmatic rehabilitation, involves the collaborative development of an activity programme between patient and the therapist. A randomised clinical trial format was used and 297 patients were randomly allocated to one of three treatments: (1) pragmatic rehabilitation, (2) supportive listening and (3) treatment as usual by the general practitioner. Both pragmatic rehabilitation and supportive listening were delivered in patients homes in 10 sessions over 18 weeks by one of three general nurses. Outcome measures were completed at baseline, at 20 weeks and at 70 weeks and …
