Eczema aNd Dermatitis: Implementing The Combined approacH (END-ITCH)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Eczema aNd Dermatitis: Implementing The Combined approacH” (END-ITCH)
IRAS ID
324333
Contact name
Liz Steed
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Barts Health NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Aims: To understand what influences clinicians and patients in using a novel, cheap treatment for managing eczema (The Combined Approach - TCA), and what changes are needed to improve its use.
Background: Eczema is painful, can lead to infections, has a negative effect on quality of life and high costs for the health service. A key problem in eczema is itch, which makes people scratch, leading to further itch and scratch. Patients have described itch as ‘the bane of my life’. TCA is novel as it includes both treating the skin with medications and also helping people manage their scratch behaviour with habit reversal. It has shown good results in several small studies, but it hasn’t been used much in practice. It is important to understand this before future research is done.
Methods
We will send a survey through Eczema Outreach Support (EOS) and the National Eczema Association (NES) to ask people with eczema their thoughts on TCA, and through professional organisations to gather health care professionals’ (HCPs) views. We will interview up to twenty patients and twenty HCPs, including people who both like and don’t like the idea of TCA. We will analyse the results to understand why people do or don’t use TCA, and if it could be improved. We will then hold a meeting to see if and how we should improve and further research TCA.PPI
We are collaborating with EOS and the NES who think this is an important topic and we have spoken with individuals with AD who helped us write our application. Patients and the public will collaborate in design of the survey, topic guides, the workshop and interpretation of results, and dissemination.Dissemination
We will publish our results and present at patient forums and conferences.REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/WM/0172
Date of REC Opinion
22 Sep 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion