Hajra Ameer Shaikh, Muhammad Saad Khan, Fouzia Hussain, Karishma.
Relationship of Self-Efficacy and Disability in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
J Dow Uni Health Sci Jan ;13(3):143-7.

Objective: To investigate the level of self-efficacy and disability in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to examine the relationship of patient self-efficacy and disability with age and disease duration.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted at the department of rheumatology in JPMC, Karachi from June to November 2017. Patients who had RA as main disease, age above fifteen years, disease duration of three months or above and cognitively able to answer the questionnaires were consecutively included. Self-efficacy was measured by Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES) and disability assessed by Health Assessment Questionnaire. The relationship between ASES and disability, age and disease duration were examined using Spearman's rho test. Statistical analysis was undertaken using SPSS for Windows, version 22.Results: Of 100 RA patients, 32% had average self-efficacy. Whereas moderate to severe disability existed in 59% of the patients. A spearman's correlation showed that arthritis self-efficacy was strongly correlated with disability (r= -0.751, p= <.0001), moderately with disease duration (r= -0.359, p= <0.0001) and weakly with age (r= -0.284, p= 0.004) whereas disability had direct moderate correlation with age and disease duration (r= 0.396, p= <0.0001 and r= 0.423, p= <0.0001, respectively). Conclusion: This cross-sectional survey concluded that average self-efficacy and moderate to severe disability exist in RA patients. Enhancing the patient's self-efficacy should be an essential part of a total treatment program of RA so that disability, treatment cost and visits to health care system could be reduced.

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