Strong work as always… from our Dutch / Australian colleagues!

Effect of awareness of being monitored on wearing of orthopaedic footwear

Thijs Lutjeboer, Jaap J. van Netten, Klaas Postema, Juha M. Hijmans

LAY ABSTRACT

Orthopaedic footwear is prescribed for people with a wide variety of foot problems. This footwear helps pe-ople to prevent (diabetic) foot ulcers, to reduce pain, and to support their feet when of a different shape. Even if the orthopaedic shoes are technically perfect, they need to be worn to be effective. Temperature sensors, placed in the inlays, can be used to measure wearing time of orthopaedic footwear. This study investigated the ef- fect of awareness of being monitored on wearing time and wearing of orthopaedic footwear. Participants in the “Awareness group” (intervention) knew they were being monitored for wearing time. The control group only knew their shoe temperature was being measured. The results showed that having awareness of being monitored in- creases wearing time and wearing of orthopaedic foot- wear by 1 h per day. The increase was especially large (4 h per day) in the subgroup of people with diabetes.