Living with severe asthma

Abstract

Asthma is a major health problem in New Zealand, and despite increased diagnostic awareness and the development of highly potent and specific therapies, morbidity and mortality from this disease have increased during recent decades. Combating increases in asthma morbidity and mortality necessitates an understanding of social and behavioural aspects of the disease. Concurrently, more dialogue with the people who have asthma would serve to improve the overall quality of care provided. To try to further understand why there has been such a small impact on asthma morbidity, continuing work from the patients' perspective is necessary. Qualitative methodologies facilitate this sort of understanding and seek to uncover thoughts, perceptions and feelings. This type of methodology is ideally suited to explore asthma from the participants' point of view and thus help increase the health professionals' understanding of this disease. This study using in-depth interviews has explored a number of pertinent issues that are a part of living with severe asthma. These include asthma management, asthma medications and participants' relationships with their doctors. Severe asthma impacts in many different ways on an individual's life, including socially, physicially and financially, which emphasises the importance of an individualistic, holistic approach to the management and care of asthma.