Asthma Action Plans Knowledge for Thailand’s Health Care Professionals

Background: Asthma is the most common chronic diseases and its patients suffer from a high level of morbidity. Health care professionals play a crucial role in effective treatment because, most patients obtain their knowledge of the disease from their physicians and hospital clinicians. Objective: To determine the level of asthma knowledge in health care professionals with respect to asthma symptoms, activity limitations, environment triggers, and educating patients. Material and Method: The attached questionnaire has been modified and administered to a group of health care workers in Thammasat Hospital. It is statistically valid and reliable and has proven to be an indispensable tool for staff. It has been completed by 365 health care professionals including nurses, physicians, and pharmacists in primary and secondary hospitals from different parts of Thailand. Descriptive statistics were used to calculate overall scores. The total sum score was calculated and analyzed using SPSS. Results: A total of 295 questionnaires were returned which provided a response rate is 80.8%. About 86.8% of the respondents were female aged between 20 to 30 years. The majority of participants was nurses and had less than 10 years of experience in asthma clinics. About half of respondents were already using an asthma action plan. More than half of respondents claimed to understand the disease including activity limitations, asthma symptoms, and environment factors correctly. Some 44.1% of physician respondents, 15.1% of nurse respondents, and 75% of pharmacist respondents could not answer some of asthma action plan knowledge questions correctly leading to the conclusion that asthma action plan knowledge is lacking throughout the health profession especially in regard to steroid medication. Conclusion: The survey showed that health care professionals in primary and secondary care hospitals in Thailand, especially, lack asthma knowledge that is crucial for them to explain to self-care managed asthma patients. The survey also suggests that improvement in asthma awareness and treatment can be made by educating this group of health care professionals primarily because they have access to asthma patients on the clinical level. Ultimately, it is the patients who need to follow the guidelines in order to support long term disease management. Keywords: Asthma, Health care professionals, Knowledge, Long-term management