1 Department of Rheumatology, Barnsley District General Hospital, 2 Academic Rheumatology Group, University of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, 3 Department of Social Medicine and 4 MRC Health Service Research Collaboration, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Correspondence to: A. Adebajo, Department of Rheumatology, Barnsley District General Hospital, South Yorkshire S75 2EP, UK. E-mail: a.o.adebajo{at}sheffield.ac.uk
We thank Treharne and colleagues for their interest in our editorial [1] on patient education.
We commend their efforts to assess the impact of their interventions. Whilst we recognize that educational interventions can be very difficult to evaluate, we feel that doing so is important, particularly in the light of limited budgets and the need to demonstrate clinical and cost effectiveness.
We wish once again to emphasize the benefits of a mixed methodology approach, as is being carried out by the Birmingham group. Combining qualitative and quantitative studies in this way provides, in our view, much richer information. Furthermore, it enables targeting and delivery of educational interventions at both a population as well as an individual level.
The authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
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