What do parents and children need to know?
About diagnosis?
The diagnosis and management of asthma can raise many issues with both parents and children, so it is important that practice nurses understand what the term means to them individually. Some parents initially can be shocked or frightened by the diagnosis as they may have preconceived ideas about asthma based on their own personal experiences. An open discussion with the parents of child with asthma can help dispel myths and alleviate concerns in regard to its cause, triggers and possible side effects from treatment, both short- and long- term. This improves the chances of successful treatment and good asthma control. Parents may have concerns relating to:
- Previous experiences of asthma
- Need for regular medications and their possible side effects
- Impact on ‘normal’ life, school, sport/exercise
- Avoidance of triggers.
It is the responsibility of the asthma nurse to ensure that children and parents of children with asthma are equipped with the right knowledge of what asthma is, how it presents, what the signs are that the condition is deteriorating, and what to do in such situations. Although symptoms tend to be more persistent in ‘adult onset’ asthma, in childhood asthma they tend to be intermittent and an increase in symptoms due to allergens many not occur at every exposure. This can cause problems with self-titration of medications, in particular preventer therapy, so it is important that parents are made aware of the nature of asthma as a disease process. Many children will experience a reduction in the severity of symptoms during puberty; around age 20 they may find that their asthma symptoms reappear for a short period before disappearing and reappearing symptoms may continue into a person’s 30s or 40s as a person maintains that ‘hypersensitivity’ to multifactorial triggers, dispelling the myth that children ‘grow out’ of asthma.