Asthma Self-Management for Adolescents in Taiwan

The asthma self-management program was developed using Bandura’s self-efficacy model. This study aims to develop a new asthma self-management program by enhancing the self-efficacy of adolescents in managing their asthma, thereby improving symptoms of asthma. The contents of the asthma self-management are based on the Expert Panel Report-3 (EPR-3) of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in the US (2007), including assessing and monitoring asthma severe and asthma control, control of environment factor and comorbid condition that affect asthma, medication, and educational for a partnerships in care. The asthma self-management program for the intervention group will be carrying out by the researcher who is a registered nurse, involves three face-to-face 30-40 minute meetings with participants from Week 1 to Week 3 and a 20 minutes mobile phone reminder call in Week 4. The aim of the phone call is to identify problems, give support and revision of information provided in the meetings sessions, and help adolescents with asthma to solve any problem they face in practicing their asthma action plan. During the discussion, the researcher will give positive feedback and encouragement about their effective behaviors in order to achieve confidence in carrying out asthma self-management. Following each of the first three face-to-face meetings a text message will be sent to remind participants to use their medication, encourage them, and motivate them. The asthma self-management program, which is 4 weeks duration, will be carrying by the researcher. During the study period, participants in the intervention group will be asked to record their daily asthma symptoms, name of the asthma medicine, and peak expiratory flow rate. After the 4-week period of the intervention, post data will be collected again