PICO format
The question is about evaluating if education is important in enhancing knowledge to help improve the health of asthmatics.
Document the Research
The first key words, “educating adult asthmatics” was entered in the Medline search database and found 47 search results. Of these most relevant were only 6 published studies. Then I entered terms, “education self-care management in asthmatic patients” which revealed 418 studies. Several studies were found to be relevant in these search results. The reason for changing terms was that because different keywords can produce different results, especially when used in different combinations. I used results from an earlier search as the second one had lot number of articles while the earlier one was narrowed. From 47 articles I found 6 to be useful.
Summarize 2 relevant studies
Abstract 1
Educating the asthma patient for routine illness management. (Heinl, 1999)
Being educated in all the happenings and events in one’s life is extremely important to attain healthy and successful living. For sick patients, or those people who are suffering from some health disorders, this becomes more important, especially to gain knowledge about the illness itself, and how to adopt ways for improvement.
This study carried out by Heinl et.al. shows that educating asthma patients about their disease is not sufficient for them to help in recovery. The behavior of the patients has not shown any alterations upon being imparted the knowledge about the disease. However, experts of the National Asthma Education Program (NAEP) suggest that individual patients need to be educated for their well-being, according to their specifiaboutining to environmental factors, self-medication skills, and self-sufficiency of the patient himself. Self-awareness has been stressed by health educationists to impart knowledge to the patients about their disease, possible consequences, and related feelings, to show an improvement in their health.
Abstract 2
Evaluation of an asthma self-management education program (Boulet, et al 1995)
This study by Boulet et.al shows the comparison of asthma patients a year before and after educating them about their disease. It took place in Quebec, in a tertiary setting in the city. Two groups were used, an intervention group and a control group, both comprising 42 patients each. The control group patients were examined for their ages, sex, and medicinal needs. The intervention had 14 males and 28 females, ages ranging from 15-71 years.
There was no asthma education imparted to these two groups before. Three training sessions on asthma were given to the intervention group, which offered them the knowledge of expiratory flow, and all about asthma and its treatment. The control group was receiving regular care. The comparison was made in the aspects of the patients’ previous hospital visits, absenteeism from work, quality of life. These were compared a year before and after this educational program was conducted, and comparisons were made through interviews and questionnaires. Results indicate that the knowledge that was imparted showed Knowledge of asthma and its management was considerably improved.
Defense of choices
The studies selected are best the choices because both the researches were carried out for the same clinical question under consideration.
“Does education of the patient and the family in self-care management result in improved health and functional status in adult asthmatics?”
The first study was about educating the asthma patient for routine management of illness. In this research, it was concluded that only educating patients is not enough, but education programs must be implemented with self-monitoring, throwing light on environmental factors and their influence, improved knowledge of the disease process, self-sufficiency, and self-medication skills. Researches suggest training of physical self-awareness, consideration, and correction of subjective notions of the disease, dealing with disease-related emotions, and providing real advice on how to cope with the disease in real life and daily situations.
The second study is on the evaluation of an Asthma self-management education program. It’s a case-controlled retrospective study with results compared before and after 1 year. The evaluation was done before and after teaching sessions. The intervention group was compared with the control group. The Control group received usual care while the intervention group received 3 training sessions with the use of action plans and self-measurements on asthma and its treatment. The study indicated that knowledge of asthma improved after conducting the session.
References
Boulet LP, Boutin H, Côté J, Leblanc P, Laviolette M. (1995) Evaluation of an asthma self-management education program. J Asthma. (3):199-206.
Heinl KW, Goldt S, Hägele R, Petermann F. (1999) Educating the asthma patient for routine illness management. Assuring long-term therapeutic success. MMW Fortschr Med. 26;141(34):29-32.