Education programmes for healthcare professionals involved in the management of atrial fibrillation can increase adherence to guidelines and improve patient safety, according to a recent trial.
Researchers found that current adherence to treatment guidelines for atrial fibrillation is low across six European countries. They concluded that increased efforts are needed to improve the implementation of guidelines and to optimise the care of patients with atrial fibrillation to prevent the high rate of adverse outcomes.
The STEER-AF trial involved 739 healthcare professionals and 1,732 patients with atrial fibrillation in 70 treatment centres across France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK between May 2022 and February 2023. The average age of participants was 69 years, and 37% were female.
Researchers randomly assigned treatment centres to one of two groups to determine whether a structured educational programme could improve adherence to guideline recommendations and the care of patients with atrial fibrillation.
In the intervention group, a total of 195 healthcare professionals received a structured education programme delivered over 16 weeks, targeting stroke prevention, rhythm control and integrated care. Healthcare professionals spent an average of 9.2 hours on the online learning platform and expert local trainers provided learning support. This was in addition to any existing continued professional development.
In the control group, healthcare professionals received only their existing educational activities.
The researchers tracked how well healthcare professionals followed the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines, in particular adherence to ESC Class I (strongly recommended treatments) and Class III recommendations (treatments that are not recommended) at baseline and six to nine months later.
The study observed a significant improvement in guideline adherence for rhythm control, with adherence increasing from 21.4% to 33.9% in the intervention group and from 20.5% to 22.9% in the control group.
There was no significant improvement in guideline adherence for stroke prevention, which changed from 63.4% to 67.5% in the intervention group and from 58.6% to 60.9% in the control group.
There was also a significant improvement in the patient-reported secondary outcome that assessed eight domains of integrated atrial fibrillation management, improving to 77.0% with the intervention and to 71.0% in the control group. All results were statistically significant and had a reliable confidence level.
The findings of this study are incorporated into the 2024 ESC Guidelines for atrial fibrillation management, which were presented at the ESC Congress 2024.
Reference
Sterliński, M et al. Design and deployment of the STEEER-AF trial to evaluate and improve guideline adherence: a cluster-randomized trial by the European Society of Cardiology and European Heart Rhythm Association. EP Europace 2024; Jun 28: DOI: 10.1093/europace/euae178.
