Asthma education tailored to individual patient needs can optimise partnerships in asthma self-management.

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the effects of patient education, tailored to individual needs of patients as part of an asthma self-management program. A tailored education program was designed which took into account individual information needs of patients by using a feedback instrument. Totally 98 steroid dependent asthmatics entered the tailored education program, 95 patients received usual care. Outcome measures were information exchanged and patient satisfaction. Study duration was 6 months. Patients in the tailored education group showed a significant reduction in information need (P=0.005). Patient satisfaction increased from 87.9 to 93.7 in this group while this did not change in the usual care group (P=0.000). Use of this tailored education program improved the GP-patient interaction within the context of a clinically effective asthma self-management program. Findings from this study may be applicable to other chronic conditions as well.