Healthcare Providers’ Perception of Asthma Education and Management on the College Campus

Abstract

Background:

One resource for asthmatic students on a college campus is the student health center (SHC). The goals of the SHC are to provide high-quality health care services and to promote a healthy campus, lifelong health, and student well-being. The American College Health Association reported in 2016 that 8.9% of college students indicated having an asthma diagnosis. In addition, the literature reveals adult physicians feel unfamiliar with chronic disease as it is frequently a multisystem illness, so they tend to be more reactive to illness than proactive. The research question is: How do Healthcare Providers (HCPs) employed at a SHC perceive the current state of asthma education and management of college students? Methods: This qualitative case study recruited five healthcare providers from the SHC of a large public university in the southwest region of the U.S. Approval for this study was granted from the university’s IRB (#5359). The HCPs were interviewed individually and in a focus group session. Data collected from the interviews underwent qualitative coding and analysis to include: (1) initial coding, (2) focused coding, and (3) axial coding. Once the codes emerged, they were assembled into themes and the data was subjected to the constant comparative method of data analysis.

Results:

Qualitative coding and analysis of the data revealed the following themes: (a) learning from experience in managing asthmatic students was prominent among the HCPs, (b) providing high-quality health care services to asthmatic students is complicated by the exorbitant cost of medications, time constraints, and lack of student knowledge about asthma (c) HCPs perceive students have not taken full responsibility for managing their asthma during their college years.

Conclusions:

The HCPs are engaging in self-directed learning to gain knowledge about asthma. The participants recognize they need additional training in lung function testing and the implementation of the national asthma guidelines. In addition, the HCPs recognize the need for college level asthma education written materials at the SHC to aid students in the self-management of their asthma. Furthermore, the SHC needs a reliable method to identify which students on campus have an asthma diagnosis. Disclosures: All authors have no conflicts of interest or industry relationships to disclose. This research project was partially funded by a doctoral stipend through Texas State University.