Course:	Living With Asthma
ID:	LWA
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Patient Skills Requirements

Patients have to be taught how to live with their asthma and how to self-manage it. One of the most effective ways to do this is in a classroom or group setting. Living With Asthma is a teacher’s kit designed for an asthma educator. It contains everything the asthma educator needs to conduct asthma education classes for patients with asthma.

Living With Asthma contains everything – lesson plans, lecture notes, overhead transparencies, handouts, discussion topics – needed to conduct a five-session course on asthma. The course content and format is designed to maximize the transfer of knowledge from the asthma educator to the patients, and the course achieves this through the method in which it implements basic education principles.

How “Living With Asthma” was designed

A good knowledge of the subject is a prerequisite for any teacher. But knowledge alone is insufficient. The teacher has to be able to transfer this knowledge to the patient and, at the same time, help the patient develop self-management skills.

The education consultants who developed Living With Asthma recognized that while most asthma educators have good teaching skills, they do not have the time or resources needed to develop a first-rate course through which they could transfer asthma knowledge and self-management skills to asthma patients. Living With Asthma was designed to meet this need. It has been carefully planned to maximize both the educator’s effectiveness as well as the knowledge transfer that occurs from educator to student.

Most people, patients included, learn slowly. They need time to assimilate information that is presented in manageable instalments. They require reinforcement. They need time to practise the new skills they are acquiring. None of these requirements are met by a weekend course which packs five or six lectures into the space of one short day. For this reason, Living With Asthma is taught over five weeks, with just one class being held each week.

People with asthma require three different skill sets in order to manage their asthma. These are:

Monitoring skills

This requires a basic understanding of asthma and its symptoms. People with asthma can be taught how to monitor their asthma through self-awareness, symptoms and peak flows. If they use a peak flow monitor, they need to be able to chart and interpret peak flow readings. They also need to be detectives to determine their triggers, and to know how to avoid and how to minimize exposure to their personal triggers.

Management skills

This is an advanced skill set. Having learned how to monitor their asthma, patients are now required to take action when they recognise a deterioration in symptoms or peak flows. Recognizing that the asthma is going out of control, they adjust their medications according to an Asthma Action Plan. They know the purpose of the different medications used to control asthma. They know when to seek medical help. They rely less and less on the health care professional to manage their asthma. They feel in control and are capable of managing the disease under normal or ordinary circumstances.

Communication skills

Persons with asthma need to be able to discuss their disease with a variety of other people, whether health care professionals, peers, supervisors or people in authority. Part of this skills set requires that they be familiar with the language of asthma, so that they can communicate unambiguously with their health care provider. These skills prevent misunderstandings, particularly when asthma is going out of control. Being able to talk effectively to people in authority is essential whether they themselves have asthma, have children with asthma, or are caregivers.

If knowledge were the only prerequisite, every person with asthma should have her or his asthma well controlled, for we are deluged with information. The asthma educator needs to be selective in the information provided, adjusting the information to meet the needs of the person with asthma. To help you, the asthma educator, we offer the Living With Asthma course.

Living with Asthma teaches the patience all these skills.