Development and evaluation of text messages designed for people with COPD on the mobile pulmonary rehabilitation (m-PR™) platform.

Objective: To develop and evaluate the ease of understanding and helpfulness of text messages designed to educate, support and motivate people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as part of an eight-week mobile pulmonary rehabilitation program (m-PR™).

Design, Participants, Setting And Outcome Measures: Text messages were developed in an iterative three stage process: i. development of 85 evidence-based text messages by multidisciplinary health professionals. ii. A survey, including random samples of text messages, was completed by people with COPD who attended a pulmonary rehabilitation assessment at one of five programs in Australia. For each message, participants rated the ease of understanding and helpfulness using a Likert scale and answered an open-ended question seeking feedback. iii. Review of all scores and free text comments informed retention, modification or removal of a text message with the final text messages evaluated for readability.

Results: Eighty-six participants with COPD completed the survey (86/100, 86%; mean (standard deviation) age 72 (9) years; 58% female). Each text message was reviewed by a minimum of five participants. The median score for ease of understanding and helpfulness of text message content was 5 ('strongly agree') and 4 ('agree') respectively. Following review of all text messages, the final bank of 80 text messages had a Flesch-Kincaid Grade level of 6.5 indicating that the messages were fairly easy to read.

Conclusion: Most participants with COPD agreed that text messages developed for m-PR™ were easy to understand and helpful. For people with COPD, text messages may educate, support and improve motivation during a pulmonary rehabilitation program. CONTRIBUTION OF PAPER.