Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that regular physical activity confers multiple health benefits in people with inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Participation in physical activity should therefore be encouraged by health professionals. Despite recognising the importance of physical activity, health professionals frequently fail to provide advice on promoting same. As advice alone is not always translated into behavior, subjective and objective measures of both physical activity and sedentary behaviour are important in order to motivate change in behaviour. Questionnaires, diaries, pedometers, accelerometers and multi-sensor devices are example of useful tools for assessing and monitoring progress of physical activity in clinic and research trials. However, health professionals awareness and use of such instruments in a clinical setting, in addition to barriers for not using same to date, has been scarcely described, and will be highlighted during this session. Data from an international cross-sectional study, describing the awareness and use of objective and subjective measures of physical activity, as well as barriers for implementation of such methods in health professionals working with patients with inflammatory arthritis in Sweden, Ireland, Denmark and Belgium, will be presented.