Providing meaningful support to patients with asthma

摘要

A sthma kills 3 people in the UK everyday, on average, and up to 90% of these deaths involve preventable factors (Department of Health (DH) et al, 2011; Asthma UK, 2015). In spite of these figures being widely reported, the annual number of deaths has remained around 1000 for many years (DH et al, 2011). One of the likely reasons for this might be how common asthma is and how we do not take it seriously as a result, as well as the complacent culture around it that could very well be costing lives (Royal College of Physicians (RCP), 2014). Everybody knows somebody who has asthma, and despite its status as a long-term condition, it does not have the same stigma that conditions like dementia, cancer, and even chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) tend to have. Some people have braces and some have inhalers-asthma is considered that normal, but we do not talk enough about how many people it kills and what can be done about it.