Eleven studies were included in the review, but six of these did not report the effectiveness of an intervention and were outside the scope of this abstract. Thus, this abstract is limited to the five included evaluations of interventions. One study was an RCT; the others were before-and-after studies, controlled trials, surveys and qualitative evaluations.
A large cluster-randomised RCT found no statistically significant difference in patient weight loss between groups; indeed, the intervention group showed a non significant weight increase. A large before-and-after study found that 33.7% of patients achieved a 5% weight loss at 12 months, with a mean weight loss in all patients of 3.2 kg. Follow-up data were available on only 282 patients out of an initial total of 1,256.
Three studies used educational interventions for nurses and were reported to contribute to improvements in practitioner knowledge and style of practice, but did not improve patient outcomes or change beliefs.
Two studies reported that nurses did not believe that changes in their practice as a result of the intervention had led to a change in patient outcome.