Valued asthma nurses improve care
21 June 2005

Asthma nurses are most effective in their treatment of people with asthma in a practice that prioritises asthma care, allows them to work independently and listens to their recommendations, according to UK researchers.

Nurse specialists, such as asthma nurses, are becoming more common in general practices as the number of people with long-term conditions increases. Until now there has been little research into the impact of these nurses on the care people receive or how they could work more effectively.

Researchers from Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry in London interviewed asthma nurses, GPs and practice nurses to gauge their opinion on the effectiveness of care given by specialist nurses and to see how this could be improved.

Four main factors were found to influence how effective an asthma nurse was in their care of people with asthma. These were: practices that prioritised asthma care; GPs who trusted practice nurses to manage long-term conditions; GPs who recognised specialist nurse expertise and acted on their advice; and practices that have simple systems in place to deal with recommendations.

People who had attended hospital after having a severe asthma attack were also questioned. They found asthma nurses to be approachable and informative, and valued the service, saying that advice on their asthma from a number of other healthcare professionals was often confusing.

The research concluded that asthma nurse influence was greatest in practices that prioritised asthma care, and where asthma nurses had clinical independence. Improving the credibility of asthma nurses among GPs and other healthcare professionals could increase the effectiveness of asthma nurses, claim the authors.

'This study shows that the skills and expertise of asthma nurses need to be more widely recognised and made available to all people with asthma to ensure they are given the best possible care,' commented Karen Newell, an asthma nurse specialist on the Asthma UK Adviceline.

The study is published in the Primary Care Respiratory Journal.