Behavioural effect of self-treatment guidelines in a self-management program for adults with asthma

To assess the efficacy of self-management programs it is important to know what behavioural changes take place. This paper assesses whether including self-treatment guidelines (action plans) in a self-management program for adult asthmatics, leads to greater behavioural changes than a program withou...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Patient education and counseling 2001-05, Vol.43 (2), p.161-169
Main Authors: van der Palen, Job, Klein, Jakob J, Zielhuis, Gerhard A, van Herwaarden, Cees L.A, Seydel, Erwin R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Asthma
Asthma - therapy
Attitude
Female
Guidelines as Topic
Health Behavior
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Nursing
Patient Compliance
Patient education
Patient Education as Topic - methods
Randomised controlled trial
Self Care
Self Efficacy
Self-management
Self-treatment
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:To assess the efficacy of self-management programs it is important to know what behavioural changes take place. This paper assesses whether including self-treatment guidelines (action plans) in a self-management program for adult asthmatics, leads to greater behavioural changes than a program without these guidelines. Patients were randomised into a self-treatment group ( n=123) or an active control group ( n=122). All subjects received self-management training. Discussed topics included the pathophysiology of asthma, medication and side-effects, triggers, symptoms, smoking, physical exercise, and compliance. The only difference was that the self-treatment group received instructions about self-treatment of exacerbations and the control group did not. At 1 year of follow-up asthma-specific self-efficacy expectancies, outcome expectancies, and asthma-specific knowledge improved significantly in all patients. Only self-treatment group patients demonstrated favourable changes in generalised self-efficacy, social support, and self-treatment and self-management behaviour, in case of a hypothetical scenario of a slow-onset exacerbation. We conclude that our self-management program is effective in changing the behavioural variables, and including self-treatment guidelines (action plans) has added benefit.
ISSN:0738-3991
1873-5134
DOI:10.1016/S0738-3991(00)00155-5