Effect of Awareness of Being Monitored on Wearing of Orthopaedic Footwear

Objective: To investigate the effect of awareness of being monitored on wearing time and adherence to wearing orthopaedic footwear. Quantitative assessment of wearing time was made using direct measurement with temperature sensors during the first 3 months after provision of footwear.

Design: Randomized controlled trial.

Intervention: Awareness that the temperature sensor is used for measuring wearing time.

Methods: All 55 participants had a temperature sensor built into the medial arch of the left insole of their orthopaedic footwear. Participants were assigned randomly to either an "awareness group" (n = 25, mean age 67 years) and knew they were being monitored for wearing time, or a "no awareness group" (n = 30, mean age 65 years) and only knew their shoe temperature was being measured. Differences were assessed with a linear mixed model.

Results: Mean (standard deviation; SD) wearing time in the intervention group was 7.32 h/day (SD 4.2), and 6.11 h/day (SD 4.1) in the control group (p = 0.017). A significant interaction effect was found between awareness and pathology group on wearing time (p = 0.036). The difference was especially large (7.0 (SD 4.7) vs 2.4 (SD 2.2) h/day) in the subgroup of people with diabetes.

Conclusion: Awareness of being monitored increases wearing time and wearing of orthopaedic footwear.