Episodic Future Thinking to Improve Anticoagulant Adherence in Atrial Fibrillation

Condition(s) studied

Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)

Episodic future thinking: Participants will engage in episodic future thinking prompted via text-based cues and picture-based cues to help them adhere to oral anticoagulants. Participants will also receive health education on atrial fibrillation-related stroke prevention.

attention control: The control group will receive standard care, including routine health education from ward nurses and one post-discharge telephone follow-up. In additon, participants will receive a message from the researcher at the same time point each day, but the message will only involve daily greetings.

Study summary

The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) on improving medication adherence in atrial fibrillation (AF) patients taking oral anticoagulants. A total of 68 participants will be randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. Those in the intervention group will receive a 3-week EFT intervention in addition to the usual care, while those in the control group will receive the usual care only. Data on medication adherence, delay discounting (DD), and anticoagulation knowledge will be collected at baseline, end of intervention, and 3-month follow-up.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Medication adherence — Baseline, 3 weeks and 15 weeks
  This study assessed oral anticoagulant adherence using the General Medication Adherence Scale (GMAS) . The 11-item scale evaluates three dimensions: (1) patient behavior related non-adherence (five items), (2) additional disease and pill burden (four items) and (3) cost-related non-adherence (two items). Each item is rated on the scale that 0 = always, 1 = mostly, 2 = sometimes, and 3 = never. Higher scores indicate better adherence and it was divided into five levels according to different scores: 30-33 (high adherence), 27-29 (good adherence), 17-26 (moderate adherence), 11-16 (low adherence), and 0-10 (poor adherence).

Trial sites (2)

Other trials for the same condition