Three Part Question
In children do written asthma action management plans reduce hospital admissions?
Clinical Scenario
A 6-year-old girl presents for a routine asthma follow-up appointment. She takes 200 µg per day of inhaled budesonide and uses her salbutamol 3–4 times per week. She has been in hospital three times in the last 2 years. The nursing student in clinic asks whether you intend to offer a written management plan as these are used widely in adult practice.
Search Strategy
Medline 1950 to May week 4 2008 using the OVID interface limited to the English language
{exp Infant/or exp Child/or exp Adolescent/or exp Child, Preschool/} AND {exp Action plan/ or exp Self management/or exp Written guidelines/or exp Written advice or/exp Discharge plan/or exp Self care/or exp/Education/or exp Home management} AND {exp Exacerbation/or exp Hospital admission/or exp Morbidity/or exp PEFR/or exp Health outcome}. PubMed and EMBASE: no further relevant articles were found.
The references of relevant papers found by this method revealed three further papers included in the analysis. A recent Cochrane review and an update of this were found to significantly overlap with this topic area but failed to fully answer our specific question.
