REDUCE: Developing the Maintenance Intervention (WP1)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Reducing the impact of diabetic foot ulcers: Developing the Maintenance Intervention (WP1)
IRAS ID
269838
Contact name
Fran Game
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals of Derby & Burton NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 30 days
Research summary
Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are poorly healing wounds below the ankle affecting 25% of people with diabetes. Less than half of people will be ulcer-free after 6 months of treatment, and the same number will experience another ulcer within a year.
Current treatments to prevent and heal ulcers do not work well. Patient education is recommended to prevent ulcers, but education alone does not work. The evidence for treatments to encourage healing is also unclear. Research suggests that people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours can affect the risk of getting DFUs and how they heal. We developed a treatment (REDUCE) to help people change these ‘risk factors’ in order to lower their chances of getting DFUs, and encourage faster healing when they occur. REDUCE has two parts. The first helps people start the process of changing these risk factors. The second supports people to maintain these changes. However, support for long-term change may be more effective if available as and when patients require it. Digital media might allow such support to be provided at low cost.
In this research we will develop a digital package to support long term change, as well as handbook for people who do not wish to use the digital package. This will involve a series of interviews with people as they are using the digital package/handbook in which we will explore their experiences of using them. We will use the feedback from these interviews to make changes to both so that the final versions are as acceptable and helpful as possible.REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
19/NS/0171
Date of REC Opinion
30 Oct 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion