Happy Spring!

I would like to update you on all our exciting accomplishments and ongoing projects. Over the past few years we offered a series  of educational seminars to help patients understand important  issues in RA. We provided seminars on sleep problems in RA, patient-doctor communication, and, most recently, medication adherence. This past summer Daniel Solomon, M.D., M.PH. spoke about the importance of medication adherence and the programs in place at BWH to help patients stay adherent with their treatments for RA and lupus.

We successfully rolled out a new study, called the Health Log, to determine if patient-doctor communication can be improved during visits with a rheumatologist. The Health Log consists of a permanent booklet and a refillable component that can be filled out before each doctor’s appointment. The permanent portion contains information about medications, surgeries, and health history and the refillable portion includes questions about health status, pain, fatigue, as well as space to write goals and questions for the doctor’s visit and the prescription refills needed. The Health Log puts information from the patient into a format that can be easily and quickly understood by the rheumatologist. We are in the process of gathering the follow-up responses from our patients after their first year of health log use. We are excited to post our findings on the project once all the data is collected. Feel free to check out our online version of the health log.

Our monthly support group continues and is held the second Wednesday of every month from 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm. The group meets by the check-in desks at the entrance to the Rheumatology Clinic. This group is open to anyone with rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis and is open to new members each month, there is no commitment necessary. For more information, please contact our current PACO Study Coordinator Hannah Tadley at 617-525-6608 or [email protected].

Regards,

Dr. Nancy A Shadick