Purpose: To provide registered nurses with information to help them manage patients with asthma.

Objectives:

1. Describe at least four major highlights of the latest Expert Panel Report on asthma diagnosis and management.
2. Discuss the role of pharmacology and environmental control in asthma management.
3. Explain basic patient management principles during an asthma exacerbation.
4. Discuss the educational needs of patients with asthma.

Description:If you’ve never seen a patient struggling for air during an acute asthma attack, chances are you will. Asthma prevalence is rising. About 22 million Americans have the disorder—6 million of them children. Every year, asthma puts nearly half a million people in the hospital and kills an estimated 4,000.

But thanks in part to better diagnosis and management, the big picture is improving. Asthma has been causing fewer deaths than before, and the overall hospitalization rate has been relatively stable in the last decade. Also, fewer patients say the disease limits their activities, and more are getting formal asthma education.

Read the article [PDF], then click on the link below to take the test.

Author

Kathleen C. Ellis is Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Tampa in Tampa, Fla. She is a speaker for Sanofi Pasteur whose pharmaceuticles are not used in the treatment of asthma.

1.6 contact hours including 1.0 pharmacology hours are provided by ANA.

The American Nurses Association is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

ANA is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, provider number CEP6178.

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