Effectiveness of Asthma Knowledge in Nurses using Asthma Care Application Compared with Written Asthma Action Plan

Background: Asthma education is crucial to prevent exacerbated symptoms and death. An Asthma Care Application (ACA) was developed to provide self-care knowledge to reduce the incidence of such. Objective: The effectiveness, in terms of knowledge and satisfaction among nurses, with the ACA was compared to a traditional written asthma action plan (WAAP). Materials and Methods: Nurses working at a university hospital attended workshops organized by our group. They were randomly divided into two groups, one using the ACA and the other a WAAP as educational instruments. Data about asthma knowledge and satisfaction were obtained by questionnaire before and after each group’s workshop. Results: Forty-four nurses were enrolled, half worked in the emergency department. The group using the ACA, 25 nurses (57% of the cohort), revealed a significant increase in post-test asthma knowledge scores (91%) compared to pre-test levels (75%) (p = 0.002). In contrast, the WAAP group showed less improvement: 89% post-test versus 80% pre-test (p = 0.135). The ACA group also reported higher satisfaction on ease of plan usage (p<0.001), a greater potential to reduce hospital admissions (p = 0.026), and portability/convenience (p = 0.026). Conclusion: This ACA has good possibilities for improving patient asthma knowledge and satisfaction as compared to current WAAP; however, it needs to move past pilot testing on the nurse cohort to the actual end-users, i.e. asthma patients. Keywords: Asthma, Action plans, Application, Asthma exacerbation