Shared decision making or paternalism in nursing consultations? A qualitative study of primary care asthma nurses' views on sharing decisions with patients regarding inhaler device selection.

Background: Although patients with asthma would like more involvement in the decision-making process, and UK government policy concerning chronic conditions supports shared decision making, it is not widely used in practice.

Objective: To investigate how nurses approach decision making in relation to inhaler choice and long-term inhaler use within a routine asthma consultation and to better understand the barriers and facilitators to shared decision making in practice.

Setting And Participants: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with post-registration, qualified nurses who routinely undertook asthma consultations and were registered on a respiratory course.

Assessment of psychosocial problems in primary care COPD patients.

The emphasis placed on assessing psychosocial needs in nurse-led practice based consultations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has not been reported. We investigated the frequency with which nurses performed a range of tasks, and explored if the types of tasks performed were related to levels of training or the setting of clinical consultations. Participants were lead COPD nurses based at 500 randomly selected UK general practices.

Assessment of key influences on asthma inhaler device selection.

Aim: To identify factors that influenced trained asthma practice nurses' inhaler device selection and the relative importance they placed on these factors in clinical practice.

Method: Questionnaires were sent to 1,500 randomly selected, trained asthma nurses working in primary care. A second, open-ended questionnaire was sent to 300 of these nurses.

National survey on the roles and training of primary care respiratory nurses in the UK in 2006: are we making progress?

Objectives: To describe nurse-led UK general practice asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) care, and the training undertaken to support it.

Methods: Questionnaires were sent to 500 randomly-selected UK asthma and COPD practice nurses.

Results: 382 nurses (76%) completed the practice characteristics section, 389 (78%) described their asthma roles and training, and 368 (74%) described their COPD roles and training.