Effectiveness of Clinical pharmacist mediated educational intervention on quality of life of Indian asthmatics

Safe and effective treatment relies upon patients being well informed and educated about their medications. The proper use of drugs and patient education are vital for the management of chronic diseases especially asthma. Developing the patient's knowledge regarding their therapy is the key component in asthma management. This study was designed to check the impact of clinical pharmacist mediated counselling on quality of life (QoL) of asthma patients.

This study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital to assess the impact of clinical pharmacist mediated patient counselling on the QoL of asthma patients using the SF-36 questionnaire. In this study, a total of a hundred patients diagnosed with asthma were enrolled by considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Out of this, half of the patients were segregated to intervention and control groups.

The study identified fumes and smoking (30%) as the major environmental trigger for asthma especially in males (50%) and it was found to be the major risk factor in males. After clinical pharmacist-led counselling, the intervention group showed improvement in QoL from baseline to 1st and 2nd follow-ups in comparison with the control group. Physical activity and quality of life-related to day to day activity was also found to be increased during the second follow-up in the intervention group than in the control group (P<0.01).

Our study concluded that continuous education programs and counselling should be conducted for asthma patients to emphasize and re-emphasize the importance of QoL, to prevent recurrences, reduce the progression of the disease and ultimately minimize the hospitalization and there is a need of continuous pharmaceutical care services/monitoring to improve the better quality of life.