Personal Nursing Research Interest on Asthma Paper

Personal Nursing Interest on Asthma - Research Paper Example Asthma is an incurable disease and individuals with this condition will need regular follow-up and monitoring of symptoms. During my postings in asthma clinic, I realized that patient education is the most important aspect of management of patients with asthma and without this, control of exacerbations and symptoms in asthma becomes difficult. Hence in this research article, I chose to discuss about patient education in asthma. The most common symptoms of asthma in an adult are wheezing, cough, nocturnal or exercise-induced cough, breathlessness, tightness of chest and sputum production (Brenner, 2009). The symptoms may be perennial or seasonal, continuous or intermittent, or during the day or night. Some of the precipitating or aggravating factors include viral infections, intense emotions, environmental irritants, exercise, pets or carpets at home, drugs like aspirin, additive foods, weather changes, stress and certain diseases like gastrointestinal reflux, sinusitis and rhinitis ( Brenner, 2009). Many patients have a family history of asthma or other allergy conditions. Treatment depends on the staging of asthma which again depends on the frequency and severity of symptoms. The main drugs for treatment are bronchodilators and steroids. These drugs can be given either oral, through metered dose inhalers or through nebulizations (Sharma and Gupta, 2009, Emedicine).