fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease: a descriptive phenomenological study

a dedicated, multidisciplinary team. and more, a key role has been proposed for the nurse. IBD serve as the first point of contact for patients, and they provide frequent and easy access to education, advice, and support aimed at improving in outcomes. We investigated the effect of the introduction of an IBD nursing role on the delivered quality of care within an IBD referral centre. Methods: In our tertiary referral IBD centre, an IBD nurse position was instituted in September 2014. All contacts (phone, email, or personal contact) and outcomes were prospectively recorded over a 12-month period, using a logbook kept by the nurse. Interventions were categorised as prescriptions and attestations, flare management, starting new therapy, follow-up on therapy, disease information and support, questions about side effects, psychosocial support, and planning of follow-up. Results: Between September 2014 and August 2015, 1 312 patient contacts were recorded (with 42% male, median age 38 years, and 72% Crohn’s disease). Most of those were phone calls (48%) and personal contact (46%) and a minority e-mails (6%). The contacts increased with time: Q1 (September–November 2014): 144, Q2 322, Q3 477, and Q4 370. More than half of the patients who contacted the IBD nurse (58%) were taking biologicals. The vast majority of contacts (94%, 1229/1312) could be handled independently by the nurse, whereas medical staff back up was needed for 6%. Further, 10% (137/1312) of the contacts were for patients with recently diagnosed disease (<1 year). Most of the contacts of the IBD nurse were assigned to the start of new therapy (12%) and the follow-up of these medications (22%), to the planning of follow-up (22%) and to providing disease information (16%). In addition 9% of the patients contacted the IBD nurse for flare management; 8% for prescriptions and attestations; 7% for psychosocial support; and 3% for questions about side effects. In the study period, 30 emergency room visits were avoided by conversion into outpatient clinic visits through the intervention of the IBD nurse and 133 unscheduled outpatient appointments were be avoided through counselling. The IBD nurse provided faster access to procedures and other departments related to IBD for 136 patients. Conclusions: The role of IBD nurses as first point of contact and counselling is evident from a high volume of nurse-patient interac-tions that increased 3 fold within the first 6 months. Avoidance of emergency room and unscheduled clinic visits, and improved access to procedures were associated with these contacts. Background: The clinical effect of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is growing, and many hospitals in have chosen to set up multidisciplinary care units for IBD patients to offer a comprehensive approach to our patients. The call is a cornerstone, because it pro-vides greater accessibility and speed in the care and management of the demands of users. This is where nurses has taken the lead because of their clinical profile and skills. Objective: to know the reasons why patients diagnosed with IBD use telephone helplines attended by nurses. Methods: We conducted an observational, multicentre, transverse court study. All IBD patient and family/relative calls were registered with units of multidisciplinary attention attended by nurses during a period of 50 working days (February–April 2014) by means of an electronic data collection logbook (DCL). Hospital participants were Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Hospital Clínic, Bellvitge University Hospital, Hospital del Mar, Univesitaria Health Corporation, and Mútua de Terrassa. Total number of patients was 7273. Analysed variables were epidemiological, typical of the calls, and reasons for consultation. Statistical Analysis SPSS 20.0 prelimi-nary was used. Results: We recorded 1 232 calls, from 752 different patients. The median age of callers was 40 years, and 52.5% were women. Amongst the patients, 60.2% had Crohn’s disease, and 39.8 % ulcer-ous colitis, with a median of 8 years (< 1–48 years) of evolution of the