Self-Care Week gives us the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back if we are looking after ourselves and consider what else we could do to take better care of ourselves. At Asthma UK we don’t think that people are given the right tools to keep their asthma under control so we are looking at ways in which the NHS and other organisations, including us, can support people living with asthma to better control their asthma every single day.
Like many conditions, asthma is something that fluctuates; it isn’t constant so it isn’t always at the forefront of people’s minds. Nevertheless, even if people are feeling ok they still need to take their medication and monitor their symptoms but in an age where people have busy lives it is easy to forget to look after yourself.
More and more of us have smart phones in our pockets and access to the internet so how can we use this to our advantage? Asthma affects 5.4 million people across the UK and we want to give as many people as possible the information and support to self-manage through technology.
People need care plans when they have a long-term condition and for asthma this is an asthma action plan. This helps people identify when their asthma is getting worse and what steps to take to avoid having a life-threatening asthma attack and potentially ending up in hospital. Independent research shows that these can help reduce the likelihood of being admitted to hospital and potentially save lives. Everyone with asthma needs this simple tool but we want to make it even better.
People with asthma are supposed to have an asthma review once a year to see how they are and check their medication, usually done by your GP practice. But you know what it is like – a quick ten minutes with your GP who asks ‘how are you? How have you been?’ and then more often than not you can’t remember the other 364 days of the year and you end up just replying ‘ok’. We want to make an asthma review more meaningful by giving people the tools to monitor their asthma every day of the year and even share that with their GP. Imagine how much better that conversation would be for you and your GP if you could see how you were three, six, nine months ago.
This is something that we are working on for asthma but research has shown that with such a large number of people of all ages it is a good condition to learn from to improve self-management and self-care for lots of other conditions. Ultimately whatever condition you have, it is with you every day so you should feel in control. We want to drive improvements in asthma self-management that people with other conditions can benefit from as well.