ABSTRACT
Patient education (PE) is the key element of almost all encounters in clinical practice. ‘The Research Agenda for General Practice/Family Medicine and Primary Health Care in Europe’, developed by the European General Practice Research Network in 2010, emphasises the lack of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of non-pharmacological interventions, in primary care/general practice. Common topics are management of diabetes, hypertension, cardiac diseases, obesity or weight management, asthma management, chronic pain management and mental health issues. The best possible research design to evaluate effectiveness of an intervention is to conduct an RCT. Patients in both groups were asked to keep a schematic diary, sign the days when they did the exercises including time and intensity. Quasi-experimental (QE) design is widely used in PE studies. An important weakness of both RCTs and QE trials is lack of contextual information or qualitative data such as patients' and providers' experiences.
