Nurses should support disease self-management strategies including action plan development, awareness of baseline symptoms and activity level, recognition of factors that worsen symptoms and early symptom management of acute exacerbation or infection. Watson and colleagues [86] developed an action plan incorporating self-management strategies for COPD and found that the intervention group readily adopted self-management skills. Action plans typically include information regarding usual treatment, what steps to take when experiencing worsening symptoms, when to seek emergency help and contact information for care providers. The main focus is to control, manage and prevent the acute