Participation factors for asthma education programs - a cross sectional survey

BACKGROUND: Although the impact of asthma education on important outcomes (e.g. emergency visits) has been well established, only an estimated quarter of asthma patients in Germany have received patient education yet. The aim of the study was to identify patient factors that could increase participation in asthma education programs. METHODS: This cross-sectional study investigated participation factors and differences between trained (n = 64) and untrained (n = 65) asthma patients from a large outpatient center in Germany. The survey included answers to asthma-related questions and open questions on patient education as well as such about knowledge of health literacy and eHealth. RESULTS: Mean age of participants was 55 ± 19 years and 61% were female. Trained patients were more likely to participate in disease management programs (odds ratio (OR) 6.85; 95%CI 2.17–21.59), were more frequently non-smokers (OR 0.07; 95%CI 0.01–0.85) and more often had an asthma action plan (OR 20.2; 1.55–263.41). Open questions’ analysis of untrained asthma patients revealed that patients felt they were not adequately informed about asthma education (37%). About one-third of all patients (27%) showed openness to online asthma education. Analysis of HL and eHealth showed no difference between the groups. CONCLUSION: Untrained asthma patients should be informed even more intensively by their physicians about the importance and value of asthma education. Asthma education does not seem to benefit patients’ health literacy. Online asthma education is of interest to approximately one-third of asthma patients. This should be motivation to develop and implement online asthma education concepts.