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What affects asthma medicine use in children? Australian asthma educator perspectives
Julianne J Chong1, Anders Davidsson, Rebekah Moles
1Department of Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Insights
Healthcare professionals identified key issues impacting children's asthma medicine use, including parental understanding and resource access. Addressing these can improve medication adherence and quality of life for pediatric asthma patients.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Respiratory Medicine
- Health Services Research
- Qualitative Health Research
Background:
- Childhood asthma presents a significant global health burden, impacting children's quality of life and straining healthcare systems.
- Suboptimal medication use in pediatric asthma persists despite effective treatments.
- Limited research explores healthcare professionals' perspectives on barriers to effective asthma medicine management in children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate challenges and issues surrounding children's asthma medicine usage from the viewpoint of healthcare professionals.
- To identify factors influencing the quality use of asthma medications in pediatric populations.
- To inform the development of targeted educational interventions for childhood asthma management.
Main Methods:
- Conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 21 Australian asthma educators.
- Utilized thematic analysis of transcribed interviews with NVivo 7 software.
- Explored perspectives on parents, children, medicines, and educational resources related to asthma management.
Main Results:
- Identified themes including insufficient parental information, poor understanding of medications, and high costs of medicines and devices.
- Highlighted issues of child self-image, the need for increased child responsibility in asthma management, and inadequate educational resources.
- Revealed a lack of standardization, access, and funding for childhood asthma educational materials.
Conclusions:
- Multiple factors influence effective asthma medicine usage in children, extending beyond clinical aspects to include socio-economic and educational dimensions.
- Healthcare professionals' insights are crucial for understanding and addressing medication adherence challenges in pediatric asthma.
- Findings support the development and evaluation of tailored educational tools for children, caretakers, and teachers to improve asthma management outcomes.
Abstract:
The global burden of childhood asthma is significant. Health care systems are faced with increasing financial costs, while children with asthma and their caretakers are faced with poorer physical health, emotional health, and quality of life. Despite the availability of effective treatment, the quality use of asthma medicines in children remains suboptimal. An investigation was conducted to explore issues related to children's asthma medicine usage from the perspective of the health care professional. Although current literature has elicited the views of caretakers and children, the health care professional viewpoint has been relatively unexplored. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 21 Australian asthma educators. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed, and transcripts were thematically analyzed with the assistance of NVivo 7. Emergent themes associated with health care professionals, parents, medicines, children, and educational resources were found. Major issues included a lack of information provided to parents, poor parental understanding of medicines, the high cost of medicines and devices, child self-image, the need for more child responsibility over asthma management, and the lack of standardization, access to, and funding for educational resources on childhood asthma. There are multitudes of key issues that may affect asthma medicines usage in children. This research will help inform the development of educational tools on the use of medicines in childhood asthma that can be evaluated for their effectiveness in getting key messages to target audiences such as children, caretakers, and teachers.
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